Daikon a la Carte

Furofuki Daikon　with Yuzu Miso “Simple is best.” That’s probably the phrase that best describes this dish. Furofuki-daikon is a typical Japanese simmered dish for winter. I brought back 2 daikon radishes from my parents’ veg. garden about a week ago. Some days passed while I couldn’t quite decide what to make out of them. Then I finally decided to give this a try. There seem to be several different versions of Furofuki daikon recipe, and I decided to try the one that called for the simplest seasoning, which is, simmering daikon with kelp, water and sake only. No dashi stock, no soy sauce. Just the flavor from the kelp. Since I’m so used to using my favorite liquid dashi concentrate, I wanted to try and see how such simple seasoning would turn out. As I mentioned in my buri-daikon entry, some preparations make simmered daikon taste much better. For furofuki, you cut daikon into apx. 3cm thick rounds, peel and do what we call mentori (= to plane off the corners.) Then make a deep crisscross in one side which should be the bottom when served. Boil them in rise rinsing water for apx. 20 min. Drain and wash with cold water quickly. Put daikon (cut side down) and a sheet of kelp in a pot and add plenty of water to cover the daikon completely. Bring to boil on high heat and then simmer over low heat until daikon is transparent and soft. I tried 2 kinds of miso toppings this time: Yuzu miso and Tori-soboro (ground chicken) miso. Furofuki daikon with Tori-soboro Miso I started with the recipe I found on a Japanese site, but ended up making many changes to the original recipe, so I don’t remember exactly how much of each ingredient I actually used. Just really roughly, this is what I think I used for each miso topping: Yuzu miso 4Tbsp Shiromiso 2 tsp sugar 1Tbsp mirin (rice wine) 1 tsp sake 1 tsp grated yuzu rind 3 tsp yuzu juice Cook miso, sugar and mirin in a saucepan over low heat stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from heat and add yuzu rind and juice. Stir well. Tori-soboro miso some ground chicken a little vegetable oil 4Tbsp miso 3 1/2Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp sake 1 Tbsp mirin 1 tsp grated ginger root Sautee ground chicken with salad oil and set aside. Cook all other ingredients in a saucepan over low heat stirring constantly until smooth. Add the sauteed ground chicken and stir well. Remove from heat. The taste? ---- * Good* ---- Almost divine. I used a little expensive kelp this time because I thought it was the key in this simple seasoning. If seasoned strongly with soy sauce and dashi, it couldn't have brought out the best of the flavor of the miso toppings, I suppose. BTW, I didn’t waste anything. The tiny daikon shreds from mentori were mixed in this. Daikon Salad with store-bought sesami dressing On the other hand, I still have bunch of takuan (pickled daikon) that my boss gave me at the end of last year. They’re not too sweet like the stevia-sweetened ones sold at supermarkets, and very good in ochazuke (tea-and-rice bowl) :D So it was a pretty daikon-ful day today. And tomorrow will be, too.