Pacman Furofuki Daikon

You see, I gained 7 pounds around the time when I made this recipe.

It’s just 7 pounds, and I know that it’s silly to worry about such a minor predicament; I have much bigger problems to deal with. But Japanese women, I believe, actually feel the same as western women about weight; we desire the comfort of fullness, yet when that desire is repressed for style, and deprivation allowed to rule, we become afraid of everything associated with being curvaceous.

Some days I seriously wonder what we’re so afraid of losing. Is it our beauty? Our body? Or something else? -Because when I looked at the mirror, I did not see a sad girl with extra 7 pounds to carry around her waistline; all I saw was a scared woman, carrying 7 tons of her insecurities, and she was carrying it all in her dark, sad brown eyes. It’s funny how small symptoms like weight gain can trigger something bigger, chasing you around like living ghosts.

By the time I was deeply haunted by those ghosts, I decided to visit my grandfather.

My grandfather is a farmer, and he owns a big vegetable farm in Tokyo. And this particular year he made a lot of glorious daikon radish, and he told me to take some of them. I grew up eating his vegetables, and my mother’s cooking with his vegetables. That night was no exception, and she made me this amazing low-calorie daikon dish called “Furofuki Daikon“.

It’s a simple dish; boiled daikon and kombu (seaweed), with a yuzu-flavored miso paste. Low-calorie foods are often tasteless and boring for me, but Furofuki Daikon was surprisingly unforgettable. Perhaps it was my mother; she is usually dismissive when I say I gain weight, but this time she wasn’t. She was snappy, but I could tell she genuinely wanted to cook this dish for me to make me feel better. It’s always the kindness that moves me the most, and both my mother and I seem to re-discover this basic fact whenever we visit my grandfather. He is not particularly a kind man, -he’s rather harsh, but for some reason he makes everyone around him smile and feel kind; -it’s the kind of magic that he possesses, and I’m forever bewitched by it.

When I had my first bite on my mother’s Furoshiki Daikon, I was like a melting miso soup after a long, cold winter day. It tasted like what home is supposed to be, and I was carefully analyzing this amazing sensation that just happened at my mother’s dining table. When I was using my chopsticks to cut the boiled daikon, I noticed that it looked very much like Pac Man. My mother and grandfather have no idea what Pac Man is, but I know a bit about him; he is a creature who keeps eating his food, but he needs to avoid the ghosts around him in order to keep on eating. And I was somehow reassured; maybe it’s not the ghosts around me that blocked me from eating; it’s my mindset that is, and the real trap is letting those ghosts take control over my life.

That’s how today’s Pacman Furofuki Daikon was created in my kitchen.

Furofuki Daikon should actually be Daikon and miso paste, but I was so touched by my mum’s creation, in which she added konjac and carrot, so I included them in my recipe as well.

 

1: Make the miso paste.
Miso, sugar, vinegar, sake, mirin, and yuzu. If you don’t have yuzu, you can substitute with lemon.

2: Make the Yuzu shreds.
Your kitchen will smell like citrus heaven, just to warn you.
3: Mix all the ingredients except for Yuzu.
Heat the pot to medium before it starts to boil. Mix with a spatula for 4 to 5 minutes while it’s hot.

After heating it for 4 to 5 minutes, you’ll be able to draw a line on the bottom of the pot. If the line does not disappear easily, your miso paste is done. Congrats. Put the paste in a container and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

4: Add Yuzu.
After resting in the refrigerator for 30 min, it is time to add the yuzu shreds. Make sure you wait till the paste is properly chilled, otherwise you will lose the beautiful fragrance of yuzu.
You can use this Miso Paste for many different varieties of Japanese cooking. I put them on my pancakes today and it was divine.

5: Get your kombu ready for the daikon dish.
Take your dried kombu out, and let it sit for 5 min in water. Then it will look like this.
6: Cut the veggies.
Daikon: Peel off the skin and cut it into 2~3cm slices.

Carrot and Konjac: cut the carrot into 1 cm slices, and prepare the konjac chunk, and make the oval shape using a cookie cutter. (I did not have a regular cutter so I actually used the back of a flower-shaped cutter.)
For making the “legs” part of the monsters, I used a small knife to make the zigzag shapes. It was fun.

7: Boil everything.
Put the kombu, daikon, carrot, and konjac in a pot with water and put it on medium heat until it starts to boil. Then lower the heat, close the lid and take about 30 to 40 minutes for more boiling, and let it cook until it gets tender. 

8: Boiling is done.
And it will look something like this. This steaming fragrance always reminds me of my mother.

9: Start crafting.
Cut the Daikon into a Pacman shape, and then cut the daikon skin into small shapes for the monsters’ eyes. Then cut the dried seaweed (nori) into tiny pieces and use them as their pupils. I used my chopsticks to place the eyes on each veggie.

Lastly, put the folded kombu sheet under Pacman and add the 3 Miso Paste dots next to Pacman. 
10: You are done.There you go, the low-calorie Furofuki Daikon, Pacman version. I had too much fun doing this gif below.

The creator of Pacman, Toru Iwatani, got the inspiration for Pacman when he was cutting a pizza. I think it’s funny how inspirations can come from anywhere, just as I was inspired by my mother when I was least expected.
I have gotten back to my normal weight; -I ate only healthy food for a while, and also went out for joggings several times a week. I’m very happy that I lost weight, but as I’m writing this, I don’t think this recipe is only about how cute and low-calorie it is. Thanks to my mother’s Furofuki Daikon recipe, I seem to dive into the world of self-reflection and introspection, and I’m devouring them all with my Pac Man, hangry for more.

 

 

Thanks for reading.
-Yuki