There’s a new Vietnamese restaurant down at Findlay Market that sells Bahn Mi (a French-Asian baguette sandwich), and one of the garnishes they use is a carrot and daikon radish pickle called Do Chua. Turns out it’s really easy to make at home, especially if you have a lot of daikon radishes from your CSA share.
This recipe makes about two cups of pickle (fits nicely into an applesauce jar). You can make more or less, but there should be more daikon than radish—the suggested ratio is 2:1. You need about 3 carrots and 6 to 8 daikon radishes, no more than 2 inches in diameter. The classic way is to peel them and cut them into matchsticks, but I'm here to tell you, it’s a pain in the neck to cut round things into matchsticks. Some recipes call for grating or shredding the peeled carrots and radishes, maybe even using a food processor, and I might try that next time.
After you make those nice little matchsticks, the next step is to put them in a bowl and sprinkle them with 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Use your hands to knead the vegetables for about 3 minutes. This expels a lot of the water from the vegetables, and as they soften you’ll see a pool of liquid forming at the bottom of the bowl. You can stop kneading when you can bend a piece of daikon so that the ends touch but it doesn’t break. Then drain them in a colander and rinse under cold running water. Press out the extra water so the vegetables are as dry as possible, then pack them in a clean jar.
To make the brine, put about 1/2 cup warm water in a big 2-cup measuring cup or some other container with a pouring spout. Add 3/4 cup distilled white vinegar (or rice vinegar) and 3/8 cup sugar, then stir to dissolve the sugar. Pour the brine over the vegetables to cover. Let the vegetables marinate in the brine for at least 1 hour before eating. They will keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 weeks.
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