Finally...What to do with all those radishes!

That's an interesting storage idea and makes sense. If I ever have extra radishes, I'll have to try it. (They go quick around here, whether it's us or the beasties.) But I really want to try that relish!

One dish I enjoyed making this spring was sauteed radishes. Basically just stir-fry the sliced roots and tops with a little olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Start with the roots and then add the tops last. (I often add cracked red pepper to sauteed greens, but you sure don't need it with radishes! They do mellow out a little bit with the cooking, though.)

I don't like the heat of radishes so I grew them for their companion planting value, until my husband sauteed some. He didn't tell me what they were, he just handed me a bowl and a fork, and they were delicious! I plan to grow lots of them this year (and let at least one grow to its heart's content so I can see the pretty flowers - thank you Megan ).

I can't wait to try the radish relish!

Oh! I forgot to mention, Alton Brown talks about storing carrots in sand in the fridge or someplace cool to help them last and I think he said it works with most root vegetables. I seem to recall him saying something about keeping them in the dark? I'll have to dig up that episode and watch it again

Miinva, give French Breakfast Radishes a try -- they're pretty (rosy red with a white "nose") and have great flavor with very little heat.

I usually grow radishes for quick summer salads and never thought to stir-fry them.
I also plant some among my melon patch to attract the insects that would normally ravage my melons. I had no bug problems with the melons last year and the radishes grew and grew as big as large turnips in their job as melon protectors.

See the big dark green leaves, those are radishes. They are inedible when that large.

I'm going to have to try some fried. Thank you.

This is a recipy I saw last year in a magazine, and I am definitly trying this when I grow my radish this year. It is for 4 people

• 3 bunches of radish
  
• salt and peper
  
• red wine vinegar
  
• 2 toes of garlic
  
• 1 little chilipeper, chopped
  
• 500 g small potatoes (the ones that are almost as big as a radish)
  
• 50 g grated mature cheese
  
• 1 spoon pine nuts
  
• 2-3 spoons of olive oil.
  

Wash the radish with leaves in cold water. Cut the leaves from the radish, but keep a little piece of the green on it. Keep the leaves for later. Cook some water and add the radish, salt, vinegar, 1 toe of garlic, and the chilipeper. Cook the radish for 10-12 min. Remove them from the heatsource and leave them in the water. Cook the potatoes in their jackets in 10 min. Remove the water. Cut the pork tenderloin in slices and sprinkle them with salt and peper. Mash the radish leaves with the garlic, pine nuts and olive oil into a smoot saus. Remove the water from the cooked radish. Fry the potatoes for 5 min in a bit of butter and keep them warm. Fry the radish for 3 min in the same fryingpan. Fry the pork tenderlion in another fryingpan 2-3 min on each side. Serve the pork tenderlion with the radish and the potatoes and pour some of the radish-leave saus over it.

I hope this is clear because I had to translate this from dutch and I am not entirely sure about the translation. Feel free to ask.

Zephyros, I love the "toes of garlic", we call them cloves in the USA but toes is so descriptive.

The radish greens sauce sounds a lot like pesto, but maybe a little more peppery than when made with basil.
I have copied the recipe and hope to try it this spring. Thanks

Well, yeah. I thought it sounded silly, those toes. I am glad you still understand what I mean. The thing is, in dutch the toes from your feet and cloves from the garlic is the same word. Although you stick some letters behind toes for garlic that makes the word small. (you might say little toes, we put some letters behind it that makes the meaning of it little, e.g. huis = house, huisje = little house).

I also thought that this sauce looked like pesto. It made me also think about it. You probably could use this radish pesto for all kinds of things. Meaning that you never have to trow away these leaves again. I like not trowing things away, when it is not necessary. Especially when it comes to food. I rather eat it.

That must be a European derivation - my grandmother used to call it a toe of garlic, too (her parents were first-generation- their parents were Swiss)

Do you think that people thought that it really looked like toes? Because usually that is where a name came from. I don't know how much the features of garlic is changed overtime. I know for example that when tomatoes came to europe for the first time, they defenitly didn't look like the tomatoes from today.

I've posted this elsewhere but will add to this thread! Honey roasted radishes. It sounds so yummy.

http://dansgoodside.com/wordpress/2011/05/03/honey-roasted-radishes/