#recipechallenge

Tokyo Cult Recipes by Maori Murota

Cooked on May 19

This is a beautiful cookbook. The photography is gorgeous and it is well designed. I bought this cookbook right after Craig and I returned from Japan in the fall of 2016. Time to cook up some tofu!

The biggest challenge of this recipe was finding the Daikon radish. Until now, I had only seen it grated next to a bowl of tempura sauce in a Japanese restaurant. I went to three grocery stores and asked the produce workers if they had any. Sold out everywhere. “Is this a Daikon?”

Fortunately, no. Those are parsnips.

“Is this Daikon?”

Nope. That is horseradish.

Finally, I found it at Sprouts a few weeks later. This is Daikon:

Much less scary compared to the others, right? At least I am learning all about root vegetables with this recipe.

The first step in the recipe was to wrap the tofu in paper towels and press the tofu between two plates for 30 minutes. Easy! While I was squeezing my tofu, I started making the sauce and grated the ginger and Daikon. I cheated on the sauce...it turns out Dashi is made with seaweed, dried fish flakes, and water. I decided to go with using Mirin, Soy Sauce, corn starch (to thicken), water, and a bit of fish sauce instead. It turned out well.

I cut up the tofu into large pieces and covered them with flour.

I heated up 3/4” of sunflower oil and started frying my tofu. This was surprisingly easy. I have always been afraid of frying foods in that much oil...little did I know how easy it was. Look at these little gems fry!

I pulled them out, placed them on some rice, drizzled my sauce, and garnished them with green onion, ginger, and grated Daikon. Cole and his girlfriend Abbie were visiting and really liked them...overall, a big success.