Radishes
If you planted your radishes last fall, they should be ready to harvest (or nearly ready) about now.
Mine certainly are.
I love me a crisp radish sandwich - fresh bread slathered with sweet unsalted butter, piled with salted sliced radishes and maybe a pinch of dill weed or fresh parsley.
I love the crunch of radishes in tuna salad and potato salad and green salads.
I love shredding spicy radishes into a slaw or a salsa or even into a cake.
Yes, cake!
What a radish does to a carrot-style cake is amazing.
Baking shredded radishes isn't the only way I cook them, either.
Cooked radishes lose their spiciness and become sweet, tender, and almost delicate, like a kohlrabi or a sweet baby turnip or rutabaga only - different. Braised radishes, dressed in butter and garlic, make a lovely side dish. Steamed radishes ornament most meats (try it with venison or ostrich!). And oven or pan roasted radishes, with lemon juice and garlic butter, just love seafood!
I also love to stir fry radishes with summer squash, carrots, celery, shrimp, and crisp water chestnuts to top noodles (rice or lo mein or angel hair) or rice. This stir fry also makes an excellent addition to a clear chicken or fish broth for a lovely light soup.
Cooking radishes in a bagna cauda, then making a rich sauce for them would make a great bruschetta topping - all savory and sweet and tender and garlicky and the crisp toasted bread would soak up the sauce and - yep, I may have that for dinner tonight.
I experimented last year with canning radishes. The ones I cooked only until barely tender did the best, but they came out a really bizarre-looking - translucent in a rusty, bloody orangey-red color. I think it would be a great component in a Halloween dish - no one would guess what it was and it looks like some alien internal organ. Or maybe as some bizarre fairy feast food...
I'll have to do some more experimenting with canning radishes so they look as appealing as they taste.
Radishes are delicious raw and I think they are even better cooked.