Seaweed Daikon Wraps

From Pure Vegetarian, Paul Gayler, Kyle Cathie Ltd, 2008.

I’ve always been well satisfied with the recipes I have followed from Pure Vegetarian so it was a disappointment to find one that just didn’t work for me. Partly it was obviously my fault but some of the problem was in the recipe.

Daikon had to be sliced very thinly along their length. A mandolin was suggested but since I don’t have one of these devices and since it does suggest you could use a potato peeler I used that. It wasn’t that easy but it was doable. I did end up with slices that were variable in shape but hopefully they should work.

The vegetables were then mixed in a bowl and seasoned. Included in the mix was some maple syrup, chopped cashews and lime juice. Yuzu juice was preferred but I could not obtain it.

Wakame seaweed was one of the vegetables that had to be pre-soaked in hot water. I am not overly keen on seaweeds for they remind me of seafoods which for me are totally distasteful. I know that the seaweed really has a smell and taste of the sea rather than of seafood but it is difficult to discount it because of this. However, bit by bit I am trying to get used to this particular vegetable. I do know it has many values but when I poured the hot water over the wakame the smell was so overpowering that I decided not to use the full amount of this ingredient.

The other vegetables (avocado, cucumber, red capsicum and mango) were chopped small. The carrot was thinly sliced. There were no instructions as to what to do with the wakame and it was in long pieces. I decided it should be chopped too though was not sure that this was the intention.

Two slices of daikon were then laid together slightly overlapping. Some of the filling was placed one end and it was rolled up. Well I tried to roll it up. The filling would keep coming out and the daikon slices tended to fall apart. It all became a bit of a mess.

There were some wakame strips left because I had cut back on the amount of this that I had used. I decided to lie a strip along the length of the daikon before adding the filling and rolling it up. This was a little bit more successful, though not much.

The resulting rolls were not able to be picked up the way a roll should but had to be eaten with a knife and fork. With the dipping sauce (now poured over the unpleasant looking rolls on the plate) they tasted quite good—much to my surprise. It’s not a dish that I would make again.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔