This is Not a Diet

I got a veggie I’ve never cooked with before in my Bountiful Baskets Asian pack today.  Thankfully, some of my Facebook followers were able to tell me the name of it so I would know what to Google to find a recipe!

Daikon Radish

A bit of searching, and I discovered that a common way to prepare this is to pickle it.  Many recipes called for carrots, which I still had leftover from the previous week.  I chose a very simple one and modified it slightly by adding fresh ginger to the dressing.  It’s pickling in my refrigerator now, but first taste was delicious.  This was very easy to make.  Here is the original recipe:  Recipe: Sweet Carrot and Daikon Radish Salad (Namasu)

When I get a new veggie, I always taste it raw just to see.  This tastes a lot like the radishes I’m used to, but it’s a little milder and maybe a tad more bitter.  First step is to thinly slice the carrots and daikon radish.  I’ve had this tool in my kitchen for a long time, but never really found a good use for it until now.  But it’s perfect for this recipe:

julienne vegetable peeler

The carrots from last week are those stupid “baby carrots.”  I would honestly never choose to buy them because I prefer my carrots grated and they are a pain to grate.  I persevered and ended up with enough for the salad.  I would recommend using whole carrots for this sort of thing if you don’t want to slice up your fingers.  Here, I’ve tossed the veggies with 2 TBSP of salt and you can already see the moisture seeping out of them:

julienned daikon and carrots

This is the step where you allow the moisture to seep out of the veggies and drain it out of the bowl every so often.  It’s pretty amazing how much moisture comes out of these things!  Next, I made the dressing.  Here’s what the original recipe called for:

rice vinegar and sugar

On a whim, I minced some fresh ginger and added that to the dressing while I waited for the veggies to drain.  I think that was a good choice, liking the flavor of this.  After most of the moisture has drained out of the carrot/radish mixture, the next step is to squeeze it to remove even more moisture.  Squeeze it a handful at a time, you’ll be surprised how much water is still left.  Notice it’s a lot less voluminous now:

after squeezing the water out

Finally, I strained the ginger out of the dressing since I didn’t want chunks of raw ginger in the final dish

strain to remove ginger

The entire dish fits in a large applesauce jar!  That surprised me since I started out with 1 1/2 lb of radish.  Looking forward to tasting this after it marinates for a day.  I plan to use it as a side/garnish for the other Asian-inspired dishes I will be cooking this weekend.

Pickled Ginger Carrot & Daikon Radish