I was really disappointed to miss weekend herb blogging last week, especially as it was hosted by Kalyn, the founder of the event. But this week I swung back into the saddle, hefting a trusty daikon with me.

Daikon is a white radish. Its Japanese name means big (’dai’) root (’kon’) which pretty much sums it up.

I’ve often had it pickled or shredded raw in Japanese food and Asian-flavoured salads, where I’ve suspected it’s been the ingredient that makes the dish memorable. But I’ve never cooked with it before.

About a month or two ago I decided to give it a try. I couldn’t find it anywhere. More embarrassingly, I had no idea what it looked liked as I’d only ever had it in a prepared form.

Then, last weekend I was rushing through the specialty grocery store, Norton St Grocer, when I saw a giant, starkly white vegetable. It looked like an overgrown carrot with its V-shape body and spurt of green foliage, only with old-man wiry facial hairs poking out every now and then. I checked the sign above it: I had found my first daikon.

Although I’d been hankering to buy a daikon for awhile, once I took it home I realised I didn’t know what to do with it. Since I’d also bought some enoki mushrooms, I decided to make a loosely-Japanese themed soup using miso paste. Dutifully, I searched google for “miso daikon.” Immediately, it came back with a link to a recipe, which I broadly followed.

You know what, I was disappointed. The daikon (which I probably didn’t cut finely enough) took a long time to cook, but didn’t absorb the flavour of the miso. Instead, it just stayed stubbornly radish-like.

So now I only had half a daikon. I’d read in World Vegetarian Classics that daikon is also used in the Middle East. I figured that perhaps I should try it in a non-Japanese setting.

Opening the fridge I saw potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots, and I couldn’t help but wish for pasties. With some puff pastry lying idly in the freezer, I decided to give them a whirl.

Ingredients

Half a daikon (about 10 cm in length)
2 potatoes (i.e. sebago)
2 sweet potatoes
2 carrots
2 - 3 sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped
4 sheets of puff pastry
1 egg
1 tbsp of milk
sesame seeds
sea salt
olive oil

Method

Peel and chop all the vegetables into 1cm sized cubes. It’s important that the cubes are all the same size so that they cook evenly. Lightly oil a baking dish (I use a spray) and add the vegetables so that they are not covering each other too much. Drizzle some good quality olive oil on to them and sprinkle with sea salt. Toss to cover all the vegetables in the mix. Bake at 180 degrees for 50 minutes, occasionally tossing the vegetables. Remove from the oven and mix in a bowl with the rosemary.

Take a sheet of puff pastry and cut it into quarters. This should leave you with four 15cm x 15cm pieces. Add a spoonful of the vegetable mixture to the centre of the first quarter.

Carefully lift up two corners of the square that are diagonally opposite and press them together, pinching the sides together on either side. Make sure the point is clear of the vegetable mixture - you may need to give the pastry a very gentle tug to do this. Take the remaining two corners and press them together so that they join with the existing point, again pressing along the sides so that the mixture is secured.

Put the pastie onto a pre-greased oven tray. Separate the egg yolk into a small bowl and add the milk. Mix together. Carefully brush the pastie with the mixture. Complete the rest of the pasties. Sprinkle the pasties with some sea salt and sesame seeds. Bake in a 180 degree oven for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is cooked and has turned golden brown.

Notes on the recipe

• These vegetables were a great combination, but you could easily substitute them for similar vegetables like swedes, parsnips, pumpkin or turnips.
• For a healthier alternative to roasting, you can boil the vegetables in some slightly salted water.
• The recipe I loosely modelled this on used pine nuts, marinated feta, roasted pumpkin and oregano.
• I added some plain yoghurt to my pasties, but couldn’t tell in the final product so I’ve left it out of the ingredients. If you want to make the inside more moist, I think it would go well with goats cheese.
• The two times I cooked daikon it took a long while. Longer than the sweet potato, and potato, for instance.

About Daikon

• Daikon tastes mild and slightly sweet. It doesn’t have a peppery taste like the standard red radish - it tastes more like turnip and has a similar texture.
• Its also known as a Japanese radish, Chinese radish and mooli.
• Daikon is a common ingredient in Japanese, Chinese and Korean food, but this versatile vegetable is also used in Indian, Nepalese, Turkish and Moroccan cooking.
• It can be eaten raw (for maximum nutritional value), pickled, dried, roasted, and cooked in stews and soups.
• In Japanese and Korean cooking it’s used for the beautiful, delicate carved garnishes of roses, birds etc that are often served with a meal.
• The sweetest part of the daikon is the top of the root, just below the leaves.
• The leaves and seeds are also edible, however the leaves do not last in a refrigerator, unlike the root.

For more information see Wikipedia, Charmaine Solomon’s Encyclopedia of Asian Food, and World Vegetarian Classics.

To read the full recap, visit this week’s host, Pat, at Up a Creek without a Patl.

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