Relishing the radish
A recipe for radish, parsley and goat's cheese salad
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It’s odd how the shape of vegetables can influence their appeal. Setting aside their nuttier flavour, hag-digit fingerling potatoes make a more bewitching forkful than regular spuds. Unstuffed, globular courgettes/zucchini are even less desirable fodder than the commonplace, elusively-flavoured, torpedo form. But serve up an Italian Romanesco ridged zucchino and suddenly you’ve a bite with a bit of promise!
Take the radish. Yes the familiar crimson globe variety presents perfect symmetry. But it’s the ones shaped like that foil-wrapped, cocoa-butter conveyance of medication so popular in Europe and so mortifying to the Brits that are suggestive of Riviera holidays and lunches at cool marble tables under umbrella pines.
Called French Breakfast, the French serve them with a dish of cold butter, a crusty baguette and some sea salt, an unlikely combination that is entirely delicious to munch with aperitifs.
For a goodly number of children, radishes are their introduction to gardening. Seeds sprinkled on damp flannels or paper towels (no-one knows what blotting paper is any more) will sprout in under a week, and in the ground turn into edible vegetables inside a month. Hair-thin radish ‘sprouts’ are mounded in tangled decoration over all manner of dishes by chefs lagging behind the foodie curve, an extravagant waste of what they could become.
Radishes may be small, but they are members of the very big Brassicaceae family, led by cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli with horseradish eye-wateringly bringing up the rear. They’re an ancient vegetable, found in Europe well before the Romans, yet evidence establishing their origin and the passage of their domestication is vague. Only in the 1st century AD do Greek and Roman records mention the radish which, if you’ve read Tabled before, you’ll know is late in the day.
But it has a long pedigree and was one of the first European crops introduced to the Americas, which seems a bit of an esoteric choice when a pilgrim must surely be scrupulously picky when packing his pioneer luggage. (“Ooh. I mustn’t forget the radish seeds!” is not a scenario I can picture.)
From 1548 until the early 19th century, the most common one in Europe was the black-skinned Spanish radish that came both round and elongated. Nowadays, skin colours can run from black and white to green via red, pink, purple and yellow. But each one of them is white inside - apart from the green watermelon radish whose flesh is pink.
There are hundreds of varieties. An ordinary seed catalogue will probably offer at least twelve of the round or long sort in the common-or-garden (sorry) department. But explore further and you’ll come across the Asian kind.
Different varieties have been discovered in India, central Asia, and central China. Scientists have settled on South East Asia as the most likely source of the original Raphanus sativus, since it’s the only region in the world in which the radish is found in its pure wild form.
It was China, not Japan, that developed the large white and mild variation of the radish familiar to the West as the daikon or Indian mooli. The Chinese grew it to produce oil.
But the Japanese have radish talent, too. If you’re really keen to feed an army on them, seek out the Sakurajima Japanese radish. It can reach 3 feet long and weigh 45kg/100lbs. As far back as 1544, a German botanist reported similar radishes, also 3ft long and 100lbs in weight. It’s unclear if they were that same variety and how on earth he dug them up.
Versatile vegetables, they can be grown as companion plants to deter aphids and other pests and diseases. They also make a good cover crop to protect the soil during the winter, the green leaves being forked in to create a compost in early spring.
While we tend to eat only the root whole and raw, the radish offers cooking possibilities. The leaves can be treated like spinach and stewed in the water that clings to their leaves once you’ve washed and drained them well with a little oil and some finely chopped garlic and red pepper flakes, or dressed as for a salad. The Koreans and the Japanese pickle their large, white skinned daikon or ‘mu’ in Korean. (It’s worth making space in your store cupboard for a sachet of pickled daikon. ‘Takuan’ in Japanese or danmuji in Korean, if you need to ask someone behind the till. Slices of it are as easily munched as peanuts just standing at the kitchen counter.)
You can also treat radishes like a milder flavour turnip, baking or roasting them in a little stock and butter.
Here’s a refreshing summer salad you can play about with, threading through very thin slivers of spring onion or fennel or celery for extra crunch, dobbing on splats of soft goats cheese or pressing into it strips of Parma ham or smoked salmon. Or not. Whatever takes your fancy…It’s a vibrant salute to summer.
2 bunches of French breakfast radishes, approx 250g/½lb
2 tablespoons medium shallots, peeled and finely minced
flaky sea salt to taste, about 1 teaspoon
1½ tablespoons sherry or white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons light olive or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon hazelnut or walnut oil for flavouring
a good handful flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 tablespoons toasted hazelnuts, lightly crushed
dollops of soft goats cheese or 55g/2oz Cabécou or other chalky goat cheese, crumbled (optional)
Wash and dry the radishes. Trim off their greens then thinly slice the radishes - very carefully if using a mandolin (I lost the side of my thumb once-upon-a-time) - reserving the leaves to cook as spinach. Transfer to a bowl along with the shallots and salt, toss to combine.
In a bowl, whisk the oils and vinegar until emulsified. Add the parsley, hazelnuts and dressing to the radishes and toss gently again. Spread across a platter, top with the goat cheese, and serve with a crusty baguette. And some very cold butter.