Sunday, January 18, 2009

my first daikon

so my neighbor, aiko-san, the old lady who always tries to talk to me in a thickly dialectal japanese, offered me a daikon radish my first year, but i told her i didn't really know how to use it. by "told her," i mean i shrugged and looked helpless. however, since we've gotten to know each other better and since i've done more japanese cooking recently, when she offered me one from her garden this year, i accepted. she also threw in some fresh spinach. i looked up some ways to use daikon and decided on a miso soup, since that's easy. i even made real kombu seaweed broth, from scratch! most people here don't do that anymore, but it's not hard and gives the soup a more complex flavor and higher nutrient content. i threw a few yuzu (citrus) peels in the broth too, and it was the most delicious miso soup i've ever made!




i stewed the rest of the daikon and crushed some sesame seeds into a salty miso sauce, and ta-da! i polished off my first daikon in one sitting.


here's me goofing off in circle K, blowing the steam from my tiny matcha latte.

1 comment:

  1. bravo on the daikon usage. n likes them in his stir fry. you look really genkhi (sp). we love and think of you often.

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