Daikon Salad: Light Vitamin Radish Salad

Name: Daikon Salad: Light Vitamin Radish Salad
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 30 min
Cuisine: Chinese cuisine
Ingredients: White radish (daikon) 0.6-0.8 kg; Carrot 2; Green lettuce 0.5 bunch; Salt, rice vinegar to taste; Mirin or sugar, sesame oil, rocket, cherry tomatoes, hot pepper optional

I really liked this vitamin daikon salad: it's tasty and has minimal calories. It also went very well with turkey patties as a side dish. To be honest, I used to overlook this vegetable, and I was wrong. Combined with carrot, green lettuce leaves and cherry tomatoes, this radish is exceptionally tasty.

Yes, it's a radish: long white roots, often weighing up to 1 kg in shops. Unlike the familiar black radish, the white one isn't as sharp; its flavour is rather mild, closer to a cabbage stalk. This vegetable is most popular in Japanese cuisine, where it goes into a huge number of dishes, from appetizers to preserves. A simple white radish appetizer is very popular, and it can be served on its own, as a side dish or as part of more complex dishes.

The flesh of the radish is firm and crunchy, which makes it perfect for vegetable appetizers and mixed salads. Since the flavour isn't very sharp, there's no need to prepare it in any special way beforehand: the root doesn't contain the mustard oil that gives radishes their particular taste and smell. So a light marinade or a slightly sour dressing is enough to make a daikon salad exceptionally tasty and pleasant.

The dressing for a vegetable salad with white Japanese radish almost always contains a mild food acid, which improves the flavour: often soy sauce or ponzu, plus sweet ingredients such as sugar or mirin, and sometimes fruit. Quite often a vinaigrette based on sesame oil is used for vegetables. However, vegetable oils increase the calorie content of the dish, which isn't always welcome.

In shops the root is almost always sold in a large size, from half a kilogram and up. One serving needs only 150-200 g, so keep that in mind; the rest can be stored in the fridge for a short while if wrapped in film. It's important that the white root is firm and fresh.

A radish salad can be made extremely low in calories if you leave out fat and sugar. White radish itself has just over 20 kcal per 100 g, yet it provides a third of an adult's daily requirement of vitamin C. The root is excellent for healthy eating and contains substances that help the digestion of starch. Out of season, you can use pickled daikon for this dish.

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Ingredients

4 servings

White radish (daikon) 0.6-0.8 kg
Carrot 2
Green lettuce 0.5 bunch
Salt, rice vinegar to taste
Mirin or sugar, sesame oil, rocket, cherry tomatoes, hot pepper optional

Step-by-step recipe

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If the white Japanese radish is a bit limp, it will be hard to grate. In that case it may be better to use pickled daikon, or try to slice it thinly with a sharp knife; it's a little tedious, but quite doable. I read somewhere that the root tastes best in the upper part, closer to the leaves. But that's by the way. It's best to take a sweet carrot, ideally a young one. All the other vegetables are optional, but they greatly improve the flavour of the dish.
Peel the white root; I advise cutting off the top layer quite thickly, as it's a little fibrous. Then slice or grate the root for the dish. Try to make it thin. If you can do it with a knife, great. A good result comes from using the grater you'd use for Korean-style carrots. Don't use a coarse household grater: the pieces will come out rough and “shaggy”, and there will be a lot of juice. Mix the grated white radish with 1-2 tbsp of rice vinegar and 1 tbsp of sweet mirin (you can replace it with 1 tsp of sugar, dissolving it right in the vinegar). Leave to marinate for 10 mins.
Peel the carrot and cut off the ends. Grate and slice it exactly the same way as the white root. Put the grated carrot in a separate bowl, salt it with 0.5 tsp of salt, then stir. Leave for 5 mins.
The marinated daikon is very easy to squeeze out of the marinade and transfer to the mixing bowl. You can rinse the salt off the carrot a little and squeeze it out lightly. Or just squeeze it out, since the radish salad isn't salted any further. If you like, add a handful of washed and dried rocket leaves to the salad: it has a light mustardy taste, a bit like that of radish. A few cherry tomatoes cut in half go well too.
Gently toss the salad with the daikon, carrot, greens and tomatoes. Try to keep the thinly cut roots from sticking together so they spread evenly through the salad. Put a handful of washed green leaves with a neutral flavour, such as lettuce, romaine or oak leaf, into a small salad bowl or dish. Place a portion of the daikon salad on top. If you like, drizzle with a little sesame oil.
The daikon salad can be served at room temperature or chilled beforehand. There's no need to add other spices, but a little sliced hot pepper won't hurt.

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Recipe facts

Yield:	4 servings
Calories:	40 kcal per 100 g
Prep:	20 mins
Cooking:	10 mins
Ready in:	30 mins
Category:	Salads › Vegetable Salads
Cuisine:	Chinese cuisine
Rating:	4.8 (6)