Sautéed Radishes

Have you ever cooked a radish? 

Radishes are one of the first things to go into my garden in the spring. They are quick to grow and they don’t mind the cold. The only thing is, I don’t love ’em. Not really. I’ll eat them sliced into a basic green salad but I’m not the type to just pick one up and pop ’em in. That’s Steve’s department, he loves them. So, every year I throw in a row of seeds and hope for the best.

Personally I think they are a bit of a pain to grow. They always seem to have such a short window. I’m not very good at successive planting so they, like most things, are all ready at one time. Leave them just a bit too late and they are woody or they split. They are also susceptible to attack by cabbage maggots, little tiny worms that bore holes into the radish bulb. I don’t know, they just seem challenging and for someone who is meh on them, not really worth it. What we do for love…

Anyway, our wee seedlings are just starting to develop. However, it seems that this year the flea beetles are out in droves and the radish tops are already beginning to look like lace. As long as they can get through the next week they should have enough leaves to withstand the barrage. If not, there’s always next year.

It’s always something. Last year it was cabbage loopers in my kale.

I’ve got that one covered this year – quite literally. Floating row cover has been installed over all of my greens – kale, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, collards and mustard greens, all under their little blanket. It’s an environmentally friendly way to keep out the loopers but will create a bunch of extra work to harvest, all to prevent that little flapping thing in the foreground of this picture from laying her (its?) eggs. Anyway…

If all else fails I have a nice little crop of radish micro-greens on my kitchen windowsill that will be ready to harvest by week’s end. I’ll be adding them to my new favourite radish salad – stay tuned.

It has never occurred to me to cook radishes but recently I remembered having come across a recipe to do just that and upon doing a little research discovered a few recipes, mostly pretty simple. I had a store-bought bag that needed to be used up so it seemed like a good way to experiment with something new.

Since I am a virgin radish cooker, I stuck to the basics, cutting my radishes in half and sautéing in a little ghee in a very hot pan. You want the radishes to blister a bit and caramelize, otherwise they won’t have much flavour. Salt and pepper were added for seasoning and a little squeeze of lemon juice and some chopped fresh italian parsley sprinkled over the top.

Cooking radish takes away the bitter heat that I associate with them and mellows out the flavour quite a bit. It was totally worth trying and I’ll be giving it another go, perhaps adding a bit of apple cider vinegar or a sprinkle of bacon. Bacon makes everything better!