Relish the Radish

Photos by Lynn Schweikart  © 2016

I used to think there was no better way to savor a radish than on a fresh baguette slathered with French butter. Even better if eaten "sur un pique-nique", in a Parisian park. Then I found this recipe for a radish salad -- so simple to prepare, yet so delicious! The past few weeks, the Wake Robin Farm stand at the Portsmouth Farmers' Market has been tempting me with bunches of jewel-like radishes.  So it was an "occasion fortuntate" to enjoy this recipe again. 

I had come across it in a July 2003 New York Time article by Mark Bittman (Mark, I miss you, please, enough with this "entrepreneurial" detour -- come back to writing your Minimalist food columns!) I liked the combination of fruit juices, piquant chili pepper, and herbs. I liked how easy it was to prepare. Most of all, I liked how it took radishes from the supporting role they play in most salads, and gave them the starring role! 

The salad takes about 20 minutes to prepare, but for 15 of those minutes, you do nothing while the radishes take a salt-water bath!

RADISH SALAD ala Mark Bittman (Serves 4)




Ingredients

About 12 radishes, thinly sliced  (Bittman recommends using mandolin, but I just used a sharp knife.) 

1 tablespoon salt (I used kosher)

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon orange juice

Ground Urfa pepper or other mild chilies to taste (Bittman says this is optional, but I love the rich, smoky taste of Urfa, with its hint of heat. I also think its deep maroon color adds a nice visual interest.)

2 tablespoons chopped mint or cilantro.  (I used a combination of both -- why not?)

Instructions

1. Combine radishes with salt, and cover with water in a bowl. Let sit 15 minutes. Drain, and rinse.

2. Meanwhile, stir together the pepper and fruit juices.

3. Toss radishes with dressing and chilies. Taste. Add more salt, pepper or lime juice as needed.

4. Garnish with the herbs, and serve.

Fun with Fennel

When it comes to pickles, my brother-in-law Dave is the man. He pickles turnips in gin, carrots in mirin, and cucumbers just about any way you can imagine. That's why it's surprising that when you're talking fennel, I've become the pickle maven. I first tasted pickled fennel courtesy of my friend Jeri Quinzio, who, in addition to being an accomplished food blogger and award-winning culinary historian (her book on ice cream, Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making, recently won the International Association of Culinary Professionals prize for culinary history), is an inspired cook.

Whenever you go to dinner at Jeri and her husband Dan's, you can count on having some kind of interesting mezze to start the meal. Her pickled fennel is one of my favorites.

Adapted from a recipe by Mario Batali, these pickles are truly tasty -- a great combination of sweet fennel and pungent vinegar. They're one of the big reasons I eagerly anticipate the first fennel of the season. So when I saw a couple of admittedly tiny bulbs at the Wake Robin Farm stand at the Portsmouth Farmers' Market, I pounced.

When I served my fennel pickles last weekend as one of the appetizers for a cocktail cruise, they disappeared fast. Fortunately, they're truly easy to make -- I mean how many two-step recipes do you have in your repertoire? Best of all, there's no waiting around for these pickles to cure. You can eat them as soon as they cool down from their pickle bath. Jeri uses less vinegar than Batali recommends -- and I use the full amount because I love that puckery taste -- must be my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. Do whatever works best for you or your guests. But make plenty -- because even people who aren't crazy about regular pickles can't seem to get enough.

Fennel Pickles
Adapted from Mario Batali’s Babbo Cookbook 






Ingredients
Two to three cups white wine vinegar (Jeri uses two, I use three.)
Two tablespoons sea salt
Fifteen - or so - black peppercorns
Two garlic cloves, peeled
One tablespoon fennel seeds
One-quarter cup sugar
Two fennel bulbs, more or less, depending on size, cored and cut into two- inch strips.
Some snipped fennel fronds for garnishing the cooled pickles, if desired

Preparation
1. In a large nonreactive saucepan combine vinegar, two cups water, salt, peppercorns, garlic, fennel seeds, and sugar. Bring to a boil.
2. Add the fennel pieces and cook until just tender. It varies from five to ten minutes or more. Remove pan from heat and set aside to cool.

A Feast of Roasted Radishes

A few years ago, when I was reorganizing my cookbooks, I moved my small collection of Time-Life Foods of the World cookbooks out of the kitchen and into the bookcase that surrounds my living room mantle. Though they were written by some of the most preeminent food writers of their day -- for instance, Waverly Root wrote the Italian volume, M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child, the French -- I'd always valued them much more for their evocative photography and storytelling than for the actual recipes. In fact, it was one of the pictures that I saw in The Cooking of Provincial France in the early seventies that changed the way I thought of radishes forever: a tow-haired boy of about four or five eating an open-faced sandwich of long rose-and-white breakfast radishes on a slice of well-buttered French bread. For someone who'd only eaten bright red radishes raw in salads or dipped in salt, it was a glimpse of an unknown, yet exciting world.

I had same thrill recently when I found not one, but two articles extolling the virtues of cooked radishes: one by Melissa Clark in The New York Times; the other by Donna Long in a Saveur article entitled Foods that Inspire. Needless to say, I was incredibly inspired by both. It was early May and the Farmers' Market in Portsmouth had just opened. I found a beautiful mixed bunch of radishes at the Wake Robin Farm stand.

I decided to take Melissa Clark's idea of combining radishes and feta and use Long's recipe for roasting. 

Then I gave it a twist of my own: serving it on crackers as an hors'd oeuvre, as sort of homage to that tow-headed French boy who had captivated me with his radish sandwich so many years ago.

Roasted Radishes
with Feta Cheese on Crackers
Based on a recipe from Saveur Magazine

Ingredients
1 bunches assorted radishes
1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 sprigs fresh thyme
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Half cup of feta cheese, crumbled
8 large flat water crackers

Directions
1. Heat oven to 425˚. Trim radish greens; reserve for another use. Wash radishes, pat dry, and transfer to a large bowl with oil and thyme. Toss to combine; season with salt and pepper.

2. Cut radishes in half and put them into a shallow baking dish and cook, turning occasionally, until golden brown and a small knife slides easily into radishes, about 20 minutes.
3. Sprinkled crumbled feta on the radishes and put back into the oven for a few minutes, until the cheese has melted.
4. Place on crackers and serve.

SERVES 4

Ta-Ta: Tat Soi

It was the morning I'd been waiting for since October: the opening of the Seacoast Growers' Market in Portsmouth. Of course, we've been lucky enough to have fresh local root vegetables and greens throughout the off-season, what with our CSA and the monthly winter markets. But I just love being outside at this hilltop market, with its views of the Mill Ponds and the city--even in the rain.

This far north, the May markets are more about seedlings, than actual produce, but I look at it as a preview of the season to come. It's fun to see all the different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and peppers that will be coming my way in July. I was also hoping to find something that would make a tasty lunch on a cool, drizzly day

Amongst the rhubarb and salad greens, I noticed that Wake Robin Farm had some fresh tat soi. I remembered that there was a container of homemade Asian pork stock in our freezer, along with couple of containers of chicken stock. And I also knew we had a stash of Trader Joe's frozen Chinese dumplings. Sounded like all the fixings for a soup of Asian greens. 

Tat soi is a leafy green with a taste that's spicier than bok choy, but not as sharp as mustard greens. Like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale, it's a member of the brassica family. And like its cousins, tat soi is high in minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants. It tastes great raw in salads or lightly sauteed in stir fries, but it also has the right texture and  flavor to be the star of a soup.

As the stock was defrosting, I put some minced ginger and garlic and a couple of Thai bird's-eye chilis and lime leaves in an oversized tea ball and put it in the soup to add some Asian spice. (I like to keep a selection of lime leaves and chilis in the freezer in both Portsmouth and Boston so I can add a quick Asian flavor to sauces, soups, and stir fries.) I washed and chopped the tat soi and sliced some carrots and scallions.

When the stock came to a boil, I added the carrots and scallions and simmered slowly until they were tender. I first added the tat soi stems, and when those had softened slightly, I swirled the leaves into the steaming broth along with a package of dumplings. When the soup was ready, I ladled it into some bowls -- making sure everyone got a nice helping of dumplings, and sprinkled some chopped cilantro on top.

You could make this soup with canned or boxed chicken stock -- preferably organic and low salt. You could also add some shittake mushrooms or leftover roast pork or chicken. But on this grey, mid-spring day, the fresh, spicy green flavor of the tat soi itself was just perfect.

Green, Green Beans of Home

It was just getting dark when I pulled into the Iron Moon Farm stand on Route 1A in Newbury. I was on a mission to find local potatoes and onions, the last of the ingredients I needed to make a traditional Schweikart family favorite: ham and string beans. My sister Robin had picked up one of Tendercrop Farm's corn-cob smoked hams the week before, and the last of the green beans from Wake Robin Farm's stand at the Portsmouth Seacoast Growers Market were in the fridge.

Wendy Smith, the proprietress of the Iron Moon Farm stand, assured me she had just what I needed.  "What are you cooking?" she asked. "Ham and string beans," I replied. She nodded in recognition. "My grandmother used to make that with salt pork, instead of ham," she said. "I wish I would have remembered that last week when I had the last of our green beans."

I quickly learned that while Wendy's grandmother was from Oklahoma and mine was from Pennsylvania Dutch country, both were of German ancestry. "It's not a New England dish," Wendy said softly, her mind in Oklahoma at that moment, I'm sure. "No," I said, thinking of our old family farm in the Oley Valley, " but it sure tastes just as good here."

It's one of those recipes that, every time I make it, the very smell in my kitchen transports me back in time. And because the beans braise for a while in ham broth, it's a perfect way to use up green beans that have been toughened a bit by the cold. One caution: you want to be sure the ham isn't too salty. The Tendercrop ham was perfect, and is well worth searching out. (Their chicken is also some of the best around.)

Maz's Ham and String Beans

Ingredients
1 non-factory-farmed smoked ham, preferable bone-in, as the bone will add flavor.
(Our Tendercrop ham was a boneless 3-lb, but we had a lefteover ham bone in the freezer. If you don't have one, buy a ham hock to supplement a boneless ham. The size of the ham doesn't matter as leftovers can always be used for sandwiches or soup.)
3 medium onions, rough-chopped (about 1 3/4 pounds)
2 1/2 to 3 pounds potatoes
2 pounds green beans, ends removed and snapped into 1 1/2" lengths
1 quart chicken stock, prefereable homemade or low-salt
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1. Put ham in a Dutch oven with chopped onions. Add a mixture of water and chicken stock to go about 2/3 of the way up the ham, and simmer, covered,  for 1 1/2 hours.

2. Turn ham over, and add potatoes, cover, and simmer for another 1/2 hour. Broth should cover 2/3 of ham. If not, add more water.

3. Add the green beans, cover, and simmer for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes until the potatoes are done and the beans are tender and just about falling apart.

4. Remove ham from broth and let sit for 10 minutes or so. Check broth for seasoning and add salt, if necessary, and freshly ground pepper to taste. Cut ham into thin slices and arrange in a soup bowl. Add beans, potatoes, and broth, and serve.

Serves 4-6 with ham left over.