I saw an odd thing tonight. I was riding my bike down the street. I had just passed the corner bar, I pass them pretty much every night, and was riding down the middle when I saw a few other bike lights. As I got closer I saw that it was 5 guys riding their bikes really slowly and another guy in the middle of them jogging down the road. The were all talking and laughing. They were wearing perfectly pressed, perfectly put together, perfectly identical black suits and ties. They looked like the Men in Black or something.
In my adult class today I only had one woman to start with. So I started chatting with her about this and that and then we turned to food. I asked her what to do with those giant radish things. I think they’re called daikon and so I will call them daikon for the remainder of this, but my memory is a little off when it comes to learning words only by hearing them, I’m a visual learner, so I could be wrong. I have mentioned the daikon before in my description of the grocery store. They are HUGE and white but they are closely related to the hot little North American radish numbers. So, a few good ideas on how to cook them...I will try some of these soon and will be sure to report.
Daikon eating directions number one:
Cut it up into chunks or cubes or think slices and boil them in water with a bit of soy sauce and cognac. And maybe a bit of sugar.
Daikon eating directions number two:
Grate it up into a paste and add some soy sauce and eat. Or put in on things like tempura (breaded and deepfried little goodies like carrots, shrimp, prawns, eel, pretty much anything that lives in the water or a vegetable).
Daikon eating directions number three:
Dice it up and put it in a salad.
(Note: by now we have been joined by another woman)
Daikon eating directions number four:
Dice it up, add some mayo and canned scallops. "Or," cried the other woman, "just eat. No scallops. Just eat. Mmm, bery good"
Our conversation then turned to other food, like mochi. There’s soft, sweet mochi and hard blocks of mochi. Mochi is a rice paste. Some are these little coloured balls that are like a sweet treat, usually in packs of multiples of three balls, one green, one white and one pink. Or they come come on a stick with some sticky sauce on them. The other are these hard blocks that aren't sweet and you’re supposed to bake. No one in Japan has an oven. They are big on the toaster ovens. Never mind that mine blew the fuse for my entire flat the only time I've ever used it. So in these little hard blocks go into the toaster oven for like five minutes and they expand then you eat it with a bit of butter on top and something else that I can’t remember, but she was insistant on the butter so I remembered that. From this topic of discussion I’ve decided to do some recipe swapping with these lovely woman (two are housewives, the other is in her mid twenties and lives at home) in English. It’s all a part of their English instruction. How wonderful.
