DAIKON SALAD

Part of a larger tempura dinner. Daikon is giant radish, called "geisha" at Coles . Further strides in such imaginative marketing will see wasabi renamed to ninja and nori to death by overwork. If it's any help they are supposed to look like the legs of High School Girls.

Daikon is great for it's refreshing radishy taste and its versatility and can be used grated on steak, cut into crudites for dips (miso and mayonnaise), cut into rounds and stewed, or grated into threads or shaved into strips with a peeler and used in a salad, which is the case here.

The dressing is 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts (rice) vinegar, one part sesame oil as a base (adjust to taste). To this I added a crushed garlic clove, some lightly fried ginger and a couple of tablespoons of pan roasted sesame seeds.

The daikon shavings went in a salad bowl, had the dressing poured over it, and then broken up bits of death by overwork over the top (which can popped in the oven for a minute or two so it breaks up more easily. Canned tuna is nice in this but I was already having some nice squid and kingfish sashimi so the John West might have come a distant second.