Right out of the garden nothing is better than a fresh radish.
My Great Aunt, a Francophile, and French teacher, taught me an old French method to serve beautiful fresh radishes. Slice the radish and serve with bread, the best butter, and salt. Add a little olive oil of course and your afternoon snack is perfect. Try this as a first course or a simple hors d’oeuvre, appetizer in French.
Simply delicious.
So, when you have too many radishes, as we do, 10 different kinds, we pickle them. A quick pickle and you have a marvelous snack to use right away. Great on salads, hamburgers, or just plain right out of the jar. Here is how you make them.
Harvest and cut into thin slices about 4 cups of fresh radishes.
Standard Pickling Liquid
2 Cups White Wine Vinegar
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Water
1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
10 Whole Black Pepper Corns
Dill to taste
Combine all the ingredients in a noncorrosive saucepan
Bring the liquid to a rolling boil
Stirring to just dissolve the sugar and the salt
Remove from the heat and add the radishes and allow the mixture to cool
Cool and refrigerate
Use tonight or this weekend.
If covered and refrigerated will keep for 6-8 weeks.
This should make enough to pickle about 4 cups of sliced radishes.
Finished pickled radishes, the vinegar is red because of the red skin of the radishes. Delicious, tangy, with a little heat and lots of flavor. Try this on a salad of fresh greens. Enjoy spring.
Then there is always a radish carpaccio. Very thinly sliced radishes almost translucent. A mandoline or truffle slicer is perfect! We pair the radishes with a carpacio of apples and roasted beets. Dressed with Olive Oil, salt and pepper.
Ciao
Ann
