Food Friday: Radishes

Early spring brings us delicious young vegetables: peas, asparagus, garlic, and radishes. Radishes are the pink darlings of early spring. Cherry red, fuchsia, magenta, hot pink, carmine, crimson, scarlet, carnelian, vermilion, coral, cardinal, cerise – I could go through my art supply catalogues picking out the names of vivid reds and pinks all day long – radishes are deeply satisfying to look at, and to gobble up. And they grow fast – plant seeds 30 days after the last frost and you, too, can enjoy pink spicy goodness.

I remember sitting on the back porch on summer evenings when I was a girl, watching my father transform four uniform pink hamburger patties into charbroiled hockey pucks on the tiny black hibachi. We would snack on the raw, red-skinned radishes that my mother doled out to us in small Pyrex bowls, filled with bone-chilling ice water. How could anything so cold have such a spicy kick?

How can we resist the lure of fresh radishes? Especially when we get fancy, and doll them up with butter and a hint of Maldon salt? The butter truly tones down the peppery, hot flavor of radish and turns it into an indulgent treat. Dorie Greenspan says, “It’s a little trick the French play to bring foods into balance, and it works.”

For the data driven – radishes are high in fiber, riboflavin, and potassium. They are low in calories, and have lots of Vitamin C. They are a natural diuretic, and have detoxing abilities. Radish facts

I prefer to dwell on the spicy flavor and the crunch.

Have you tried sliced radishes on buttered bread? They will jazz up your next tea party the way cucumber sandwiches never have. Although, if you were French, you would have been eating radishes on buttered slices of brown bread for breakfast for years. Mais oui! Radishes on Brown Bread

And if you’d rather not be picking up disks of radishes escaping from your sandwiches, try this easy peasy radish butter. Yumsters! Radish Butter

Consider the cocktail, and how easy it is to add some sliced radishes to your favorite Bloody Mary recipe. I’m not sure that I would go to all the trouble that this recipe stirs up – I would have to make a separate trip out to buy sherry, after all. Easter Cocktails Radishes will add a kick to the bloodies you might need to add to your Easter brunch menu – making all those jelly beans palatable. (Don’t forget – Easter is April 20th – it’s almost time to start hiding those Easter eggs.

For your next book club meeting, here is a cocktail with literary aspirations: Radish Gin Cocktail I haven’t been able to find the Cocchi Americano at our liquor store, though. So I have left it out, and no one seems the wiser. Nor has it been noted by my well-read blue stockings that I also used Bombay instead of the requisite Dorothy Parker gin. (For the crowd that is used to extremely cheap white wine, this is an eye-opener, just like Uncle Willy’s in The Philadelphia Story. It packs a punch.)

Here’s one for Mr. Sanders to perfect: grilled steak with grilled radishes. Grilled Steak 
It makes me sad, though, to cook a radish. There are some vegetables that are meant to be eaten gloriously simple and raw – like fresh peas, carrots, green beans and celery. Luke the wonder dog agrees.

I think I will just mosey out to the kitchen now and cut the tops off some fresh, rosy red radishes. Then I’ll slice off the root ends, pretend that I can carve the little globes into beauteous scarlet rosettes, and plop them into a small bowl of ice water. Then I will sprinkle some crunchy Maldon salt flakes over the clumsy rose petal shapes I have created, and eat one of my favorite root vegetables.

“Plant a radish.
Get a radish.
Never any doubt.
That’s why I love vegetables;
You know what you’re about!”
—Tom Jones

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.