With the onset of spring, I want to change everything. Hair color, the road to work, licensed online betting site, playlist, diet, and all that stuff.
But how to preserve the right to tasty, not just healthy food? We recommend meeting a guest from mysterious Asia, who has already managed to register in the windows of our supermarkets, in the markets and even in the beds of progressive domestic amateur gardeners.
Japanese Origins
A root vegetable with an exotic and even slightly cinematic name “daikon” comes from Japan. Although the fruit is 95% water, it has a memorable pleasant sweet taste and, unlike radish, does not contain mustard oils. But 100 grams of daikon contains 34% of the daily intake of vitamin C, which means that daikon is a product that is good for the skin. In addition, there are only 21 kilocalories in daikon, which deservedly enrolls the product into the dietary family.
The Japanese eat daikon every day and plant the product in such quantities that it occupies the largest planting area of any vegetable crop in the Country of the Rising Sun. In addition, the daikon is extremely popular in Korea, Thailand, China, and even India. Why? The answer is simple: this “sweet radish” is unpretentious for farmers, tastes good, and is inexpensive. And most importantly, you can cook a wide variety of dishes with daikon!
Salad Mood
They say that a real woman knows how to make three things out of nothing: a hat, a salad, and a scandal. Now we are interested in the salad, and if you have cucumber, sesame, daikon, and vegetable oil in your kitchen, then the salad will be ready in five minutes!
Daikon is harmoniously combined in salads with carrots, cabbage, cilantro, shiitake mushrooms, or ordinary mushrooms, apples, pears, cranberries, melons, peanuts, and cashews.
Gourmets will appreciate the recipes for mixing daikon with grated parmesan, squid, or octopus, as well as newfangled bowls with salmon, chicken, or roast beef.
Hot Hits
Especially for those who want to try daikon in hot dishes, we inform you that there are many delicious surprises awaiting you. Let’s start with a warm salad: a gourmet combination of baked lamb, daikon, bell pepper and cilantro in a creamy sauce is definitely a family recipe for many. Also try the daikon, carrot, and cabbage pies – a real treat!
And rich udon and ramen with meat or seafood will become noticeably tastier if you add a handful of cut into strips of daikon.
Rolls Rule
By the way, the daikon, for all its popularity in Pan-Asian cuisine, also serves as an indispensable ingredient for rolls and sushi: futomaki, nigiri, spring rolls, and even tempura rolls are traditionally at least one-fifth of crispy daikon slices.
If you are not a professional sushi specialist, prepare the most elementary roll at home: cut the daikon into thin wide slices and use it as a pancake-like casing, and the filling can be any – make a constructor from your favorite flavor patterns and share your culinary creation with loved ones.
Two in One: Tasty and Healthy
There is absolutely no fat in daikon. Only carbohydrates and proteins. And, by the way, during the period of spring beriberi, in some miraculous natural way, daikon enzymes begin to activate and enrich our body with vital microelements. Add to all of the above the fact that daikon contains fiber, which effectively fights excess weight and can be safely called superfood daikon. It is interesting that in the process of maturation in the soil, the daikon is so smart that it categorically does not absorb nitrates.
So, although the name of the daikon is consonant with the dragon, there is nothing terrible and dangerous in this miracle product, but there are only health benefits, and joy to the taste buds. Discover the unknown facets of Pan-Asian cuisine at home and start the spring salad season with daikon, the new superfood available to everyone!
