Day 281: Daikon & Pepper Salad ♥
Today's winter vegetable salad: A quick mix of crisp, wet daikon and bell pepper. Very pretty color, yes?! Weight Watchers Friendly, however you count points. Low Cal. Low Carb. Naturally Gluten Free. Paleo. Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real".
WHAT IS DAIKON? Meet my new favorite vegetable: daikon! Daikon is the ONLY vegetable that starts with the Letter D – who knew? (The Alphabet of Vegetables knew, that's who!) It's also called Japanese radish, Chinese radish, Asian radish and Chinese turnip; also white radish, winter radish, even the "icicle radish". The syllables mean big (dai) and root (kon) in Japanese.
Daikon comes in a huge, white baton-like root. (For pictures, see Wikipedia.) It is sweet and wet and has wonderful tooth-crunch. It lacks the bitter bite of radish and the woodiness of jicama. It peels as easily as a carrot and slices as easily as a cucumber. Daikon would be a terrific addition to crispy vegetable platters or diced/grated into fresh slaws. A whole pound of daikon has only 82 calories. It's also low-carb, low-calorie and low-cholesterol. Daikon is GREAT!
I tend to forget about vegetable salads during the winter. My mistake! This simple daikon-pepper-watercress combination tasted so fresh and alive. It was both filling and nutritious.
RECIPE for DAIKON & PEPPER SALAD
Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Time to table: 10 minutes
Serves 4
Time to table: 10 minutes
Serves 4
8 ounces daikon
1 red pepper, diced
4 tablespoons chopped watercress or fresh herbs such as parsley or cilantro
1-1/2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
Salt to taste
Peel the daikon, then cut in thin rounds. Stack three or four rounds, then cut into matchsticks. Combine daikon, red pepper and greens in a bowl. Sprinkle with vinegar, olive oil and a touch of salt. Toss to combine.
ALANNA's TIPS & KITCHEN NOTES
CHANGES FROM THE INSPIRING RECIPE I completely changed the proportions of this salad. To my taste, it's just right. The inspiring recipe called for two bell peppers, a whole 12 cups of watercress (whoah, that'd be a LOT of watercress) and 4 tablespoons of olive oil.
NO WATERCRESS? It's kinda hard to find but I do love its peppery bite. Arugula would be a good substitute. But I love this salad with easy-to-find and inexpensive cilantro, parsley would work too.
In 2006, I found daikon matchsticks "fussy-to-cut and fussy-to-eat". In 2015, the matchsticks seemed exactly the right thing! Dicing the daikon would make it more like pico de gallo.
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QUICK! QUICK! MORE RECIPES WITH THESE INGREDIENTS
daikonMORE RECIPES for WINTER SALADS
~ Healthy Red & Green Green-Bean Salad ~~ Last-Minute Festive Celery & Cauliflower Salad ~
~ Winter Tomato Salad (Quick Pickled Vegetables) ~
~ more daikon recipes ~
~ more salad recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture
~ Spinach Salad with Fruity Vinaigrette, Fresh Fruit & Glazed Pecans ~
~ Quick 'n' Easy Raw Salad ~
~ Mexican Fruit Salad with Winter Fruits ~
~ more salad recipes ~
from Kitchen Parade, my food column
A Veggie Venture is home of "veggie evangelist" Alanna Kellogg and the
famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.
© Copyright Kitchen Parade 2006, 2015 & 2018
famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.
© Copyright Kitchen Parade 2006, 2015 & 2018
Fun to see your sister is now a blogger. This salad looks great. I discovered Daikon years ago when I took a Chinese cooking class. It's a wonderful vegetable.
ReplyDeleteHi Alanna - thank you for visiting my blog, your recipes are wonderful and very inspiring! Can you get daikon easily where you live? I really miss them (I'm Japanese) but it's quite hard to find them here. The salad looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteHi Kalyn & Keiko - I have to be the luckiest adventurous cook in the world. Within walking distance there's a grocery called Global Foods owned by a man who grew up in Thailand but who's built a store with familiar tastes of home for ALL immigrants. It's like the United Nations of food! And that's where I find things like Thai eggplant and black radishes and daikon and -- sometime soon -- bitter melon and ridged gourd! The daikon, it'll be a regular, however.
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