With the high prices of fresh vegetables these days, even price-stable winter greens like napa cabbage and daikon are no longer safe from the forces of inflation.
Sticking to your meal-planning budget has now gotten a little trickier, but looking to the past can be one way to keep your grocery expenses in check. In the days before refrigeration and the worldwide shipping of fresh produce, foods were preserved in traditional methods, and a well-known example is kiriboshi (cut and dried) daikon.
Sometimes known as just kiriboshi (or nokishinobu if you’re from Kyoto), the root vegetable has been prepared in this way since the Edo Period (1603-1867), when fresh daikon gathered during fall and winter were cut into thin strips before being spread out under the sun and left to dry.
Drying not only helps preserve the daikon but also increases the radish’s umami flavor, so you don’t need to add dashi when cooking it. The drying process also boosts the amount of calcium by more than 20 times compared to raw daikon, and it also increases the amount of potassium, folic acid and fiber.
Kiriboshi daikon has a rather off-putting aroma fresh out of the package. This can be eliminated by rinsing it in water before soaking to reconstitute it. For this recipe, we are stewing it with meat and vegetables to make an easy, delicious side dish. Well-covered, this keeps in the refrigerator for three to four days.
Serves 4 to 6
Prep time: 10 minutes (does not include soaking time)
Cook time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
- 2 dried shiitake
- 50 grams kiriboshi daikon
- ¼ medium onion
- 1 piece ginger (about 1 centimeter long)
- ½ small carrot
- 1 small red chili pepper
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 200 grams ground pork
- 3 tablespoons sake
- 2 tablespoons mirin
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce
Directions:
1. In a bowl, cover your shiitake with water and soak for about an hour. In a separate bowl, rinse the kiriboshi daikon and soak in water to cover for 15 minutes. Drain both the shiitake and kiriboshi daikon well and make sure to reserve 200 milliliters of each soaking liquid. Remove the roots from the shiitake and slice thinly.
2. Thinly slice the onion, mince the ginger and shred the carrot. De-seed and finely mince the red chili pepper.
3. Heat up the sesame oil in a pan and add the ginger. When it’s fragrant, add the ground pork and stir-fry until it’s lightly browned. Add the onion, carrot and chili pepper and stir-fry for three to four minutes. Add the kiriboshi daikon and shiitake, then stir-fry for two to three minutes.
4. Add the mirin, sugar, soy sauce and the soaking liquids from step 1. Simmer over high heat for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it soak up the flavors in the cooking liquid. Serve with hot rice and miso soup.
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