Featured Producers/Products
– Laos Fresh Farm
– Thirlstane Gardens
What does one do with 90cms and 3kg of daikon? There are only so many salads and pickles one can eat! This Asian staple veg can be daunting, and if ill-prepared can taste dirty and vaguely sulphurous. Not nice.
This recipe will alleviate your daikon anxiety. It’s refreshing and complex, stable in the fridge for a month or so and makes the perfect contribution to a plate of fried rice, fried chicken of a whole baked fish. Once you start to explore it’s potential you may well find yourself chucking it on almost anything!
Pro-tip: Squeeze the juice! By squeezing the liquid from the grated daikon, you make room for the liquid produced by the other ingredients. If you didn’t do this, you’d have a bit more of a soup than a chutney! Not good. It’s the oxidation of the daikon that can produce a sulphurous (read: farty) odour, so removing as much liquid as possible means removing more matter that is vulnerable to oxidation, saving your hard work from a smelly and unpleasant end.
Recipe:
1kg of prepared (grated) daikon radish
100 grams of ginger
2 bunches of coriander
50 grams Palm sugar
2 Golden shallots
Juice of 2 limes
½ tsp of sea salt
2 green chilli, halved and deseeded
3 Kaffir lime leaves (or lemon leaves)
1 tbsp of shrimp paste (or miso if vegan)
Trim, peel and grate the daikon (a food processor with a grating attachment is idea here)
Place the grated daikon in a colander, using your hands squeeze out as much juice as possible
Place all the other ingredients in a food processor, and blitz to a paste
In a large mixing bowl, rub the paste mix into the drained and grated daikon until homogenous
Sterilise your storage jars
Pack the mixture into the sterilised jars and refrigerate immediately
Allow a week before opening and serving
For longer shelf life, heat process the jars in a water bath at 75°C for 30 minutes, allow to stand before refrigerating.
Enjoy!
Rhys Hannan – Harvest Chef de Mission.