Alicia- you said that you love daikon. I would love to try them, but I'm a little confused. I found what I thought you had described at the grocery store, but they rang it up as parsnips.  Is that close or the same or just different?  I bought them anyway and had them tonight roasted with turnips. Delish!  We also had the bok choy with ume vinaigrette and wild rice. Thanks so much for your inspiration! I love your book. And any info on the daikon would be helpful. Thanks!!

Daikon is a type of radish.  It has white skin (with a bit of green at times) and a leafy green top (like a carrot).  It can be eaten raw or cooked (I usually remove the skin before grating or cooking), is spicy to the taste when raw (like a radish but stronger) and mild and deliciously sweet (in my opinion) when cooked.  I just bought some today at the Japanese market, but I have also found daikon at my local Ralphs.  I hope this helps.  :)

Thank you for your info. It does help. I live in a small town in Mississippi and I can bet nobody around here has even heard of a Daikon.  Next time I go to Memphis to the Whole foods store I will look there for them. I wood really like to try them. Thanks Noel

I didn't know what it looked like either . . . I found it at Whole Foods, and it looks exactly like a white carrot (a little thicker though). 

A word of warning about daikon - it can smell rather strong after grated or cooked.  I made the mistake of bringing some with me to school for lunch and eating it in my classroom with the doors closed.  When my fourth grade students came back to the room after PE, they wrinkled their little noses and politely said that something smelled stinky.  (We quickly opened the classroom doors for a few minutes and I made a note to self - open doors before eating braised daikon at school.)  Please don't let this deter you from trying it - it is really very delicious and is much, much, much milder tasting than its smell.  It is one of my favorites and I eat at least every other week and sometimes more often.  I just thought that it would be nice to know this before you tried it for the first time.    

Amy it's so wonderful to see someone on here that lives even remotely close to me! I live just outside Memphis. Would love to trade secrets on where you find things. Sometimes our whole foods doesn't always have everything I'm looking for, but it's our best hope here in the mid-south.

I find it easy to buy somethings on the internet.  I buy what I can locally but it is very limited here in Iuka. Let me know if you have heard or ever been to our neck of the woods. Pickwick Lake?

I just tried daikon for the first time last night. I put it in a sauce that I was making. Yummy!! I had to buy mine at a a Whole Foods. I was at a local grocery store (do they have Schnucks outside of St. Louis??), and thought I saw some, and it ended up being parsnips - apparently they really do look a lot alike!!

I just googled "daikon" and wow, they really do look like white carrots!  Looking forward to trying them in some recipes.  Going to whole foods tonight, should be fun to try a lot of new foods.

Just used some in a stir fry! - so good! Hope you enjoy it!

Tried making the recipe from Alicia's book.  Braised Diakon in Mirin and Shoyu but it's taking forever to boil the liquid down.  Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  It still comes out good but takes about one and a half hours to cook.

Last night for dinner, I shredded the daikon and put it in a pan with a little safflower oil and lots of garlic, then added spinach after it cooked. A very yummy vegetable side dish!!

 I've found daikon in the UK - but here it's sold as mooli which is more like the Indian name for it than the Japanese.   I've eaten it in the past and it's lovely shredded and/or added to a stir fry.

I like to do the weight loss tea and this morning I chopped the carrots and daikon.  It was quicker and not as messy as grating. Does   anyone see where it loses any of its potency to cook it this way?

Oh, one more thing....my son says that our house always smells like vegan farts and its because of the smell of cooking daikon!