One of the themes for today’s cooking lesson was to make use of common items that are found in most homes. Case in point is the trusty daikon radish. Recently both of my daughters came home from school with a daikon radish that they had received (as did all the other children) from the school. Daikons are big vegetables and they are a popular food item in Japan. Often they are cooked with soups, made into pickles or simmered with other foods. We decided to find a new use for this vegetable, and the answer was to make gratin.

Pictured on the left is daikon gratin which has less calories than if it had been made with potatoes. The daikon gratin is a rich dish, made with some cream and cheese and so to balance out the meal we needed something lighter and something that would help to cut the richness in the mouth. The answer was a recipe I came across this summer for spicy calamari served with noodles and herbs. The middle picture shows the noodles covered with the spicy squid and topped with chopped mint. The rice noodles were cooked in the same broth used to cook the daikon before baking it and then dressed with fish sauce and lemon juice. When mixed and eaten together, the citrus provides a nice kick after all the cream and cheese from the gratin, but the spicy squid, mint and fish sauce keep the dish from being just tart tasting.

And speaking of tarts, dessert was cranberry orange tarts. Using store bought tarts (another theme in this lesson was to make things easy, so the meal could be made in a short time) students mixed just a few ingredients to create the cranberry filling. It was a nice ending to a satisfying and delicious meal.

As always thanks to the students for cooking so well and for leaving my kitchen spotlessly clean when they left. I look forward to our next cooking lesson together.