Tokyo Koji Daikon Pickles (べったら漬け, Bettarazuke)

Daikon in late autumn has a clean snap and a sweetness hiding under its peppery edge. That is the one you want here. Bettarazuke looks like a pickle that belongs to a specialist, sticky with kōji and tied to an old Tokyo fair, but the work is plain: salt first, sweetness second, wait with some patience.

The first salting decides the dish. Daikon carries a great deal of water, and if you put it straight into the sweet kōji bed, that water thins the pickle and leaves the flavor vague. Salt draws the water out, firms the flesh, and makes room for the amazake-like sweetness to enter. Nothing hidden. The daikon must still taste like daikon.

Kōji is rice inoculated with a useful mold, and in this pickle it does a gentle piece of labor. It lends sweetness, soft aroma, and a pale sticky coating without turning the vegetable heavy. We serve bettarazuke as tsukemono, a small pickle beside rice, often at a celebration table where one crisp, bright slice wakes the mouth between richer dishes. Leave it room on the plate. A pickle crowded into a heap becomes kitchen storage, not moritsuke.