Takuan

Takuan (daïkon mariné)

What it is

Whole daikon are hung in the wind for weeks until they can be bent into a hoop without breaking, and only then are they buried in rice bran and salt for several months. The name belongs to Takuan Soho, a seventeenth-century Zen abbot; the story goes that he served the pickle to a shogun who declared it should carry his name.

In the kitchen

Rinse the bran off and cut it 2-3 mm across the round - the noise it makes is half the point, and thin shavings lose it. It belongs cold at the end of a rice meal; laid on anything hot it slackens within a minute.

Goes with

Rice Miso Cucumber Sesame Soy sauce Nori Sencha

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us