Collected Quotidian » Radish

How to Store Radishes, Carrots, Beets, and Turnips

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:02:22 +0000

The decline of home cooking has become a trendy thing to complain about these days. If only more people would cook at home, the argument goes, we could begin to solve such national problems as obesity, diabetes, and the falling economy. But very little is being done to actually make that happen. Yes, Jamie Oliver taught 1,000 people how to cook in a week. But unless you happen to live in Huntington West Virginia, you are stuck with the commercials in between the shows. You know, the ones that claim Stouffer’s and Lean Cuisine and necessary to make healthy daily meals, because working with raw ingredients is too intimidating and best left to the professionals.

There is a huge gap in general knowledge not only in the basics of cooking, but in how to store raw ingredients. People seem to fall into two extremes when it comes to veggie storage. There is the Seal Everything Tightly In A Ziploc Bag So It Doesn’t Get Contaminated camp and then there is the Throw Everything In The Fridge Exactly How It Came From The Store And Hope For The Best camp. And it’s no wonder there is such confusion. Meat and dairy products are the only foods that come with explicit storage instructions - instructions that make it sound like if you look at the ground beef in your fridge and think “salmonella,” the cells with magically begin to spawn. Then we have the likes of Food Network fridges that are always cascading with fresh vegetables, wholly intact down to the carrot tops waving at the camera, nary a bag in sight.

I’ve spent some time in both camps. Neither of them served me well. I’d either end up with a amoeba-ish slimy mess in my bags or dried out mummified versions of food left loose on the shelf. There is nothing more frustrating than buying beautiful fresh food and having it transform into inedible slime or wood chips in your fridge. In reality, each vegetable has different needs when it come to storage. These needs include packaging, location, and pre-storage prep.

In order to clear up that confusion, I am starting a How to Store Your Food series. Whenever I post a recipe using a new ingredient, I will also add a short post explaining how to store that food. These posts will be tagged with “How to store your food,” so they will be easy to find.

On that note . . .

How to Store Radishes, Carrots, Beets, and Turnips
Radishes, carrots, and turnips are all root vegetables. That means that the part that we are most familiar with eating is the root of the plant. That means several things for the cook.

First, it means that there is a whole leafy “plant part” of the vegetable that needs to be taken care of. Depending on how you buy your vegetables, this step may or may not apply to you. If your carrots, radishes, ect have leaves and stems attached to them, it applies to you. If they don’t, skip to step three. As soon as you get your leafy root vegetables home, cut the leafy plant part off. Why? Well, think back to your third grade plant science. The root part’s job is to collect moisture for the plant part. The plant part then sucks the moisture out of the root part. This system works in the ground because there is always (hopefully) more moisture in the ground for the root to replenish what the plant takes. But once it is harvested, that cycle stops. So, if you leave the leafy plant part attached to the root part for very long, the plant is going to suck the root dry. You might have carrot tops waving at you when you open the fridge door, but you will also have a spongy, withered, not-at-all-crisp carrot. I know it’s pretty and satisfying to have that bundle of fresh carrots laying on your shelf like a lithe sunbather, but do yourself a favor and cut the tops off. Leave about 1/2- 1 inch of the stem intact. Your vegetables will look like they’ve all had buzz cuts.
Put the greens in a loosely sealed plastic bag in the fridge. They should be totally dry. Don’t wash them until you are ready to use them. Remember, water equals slime. Try to keep the bag either in the crisper drawer or on the back of the bottom shelf. They will keep about a week.
You now are left with just the root part of the vegetable. The most common way to store them is in a loosely sealed plastic bag. (A separate one from the greens). The bag then goes in the crisper drawer. Stored this way, the vegetables will keep about week, carrots a little longer. Then there is the less orthodox way outlined by the high priest of kitchen hacks, Alton Brown. Because these are roots, he reasons, they will be most at home in a dirt like environment. Therefore, he suggests filling one of your crisper drawers with . . . sand. You then bury your vegetables in the sand. He swears he’s kept root vegetables crisp and fresh in this manner for months. Theoretically this makes sense because you are basically creating a mini root cellar. I’ve not personally tried this method yet because, silly me, I keep misplacing my extra pile of excess sand. But someday, I plan on it. If you decide to give this method a shot, let me know how it goes. For now, my roots go plastic bags

Radish Curry

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:58:10 +0000

I learned an important lesson about radishes in making this curry: Radishes lose their zing when cooked. I know, who’d've thought, right? After our stellar brunch date of simple Bread and Buttered Radishes, this dish tasted flat. Kind of like . . . say you watch this really weird French movie with the Someone From the Checkout Line. You see the artistic styling of the plot, the authentically lame characters, and the poignant theme all wrapped in a beautifully rendered screen composition. This movie has explained a bit of yourself to you. Ready to have a deep meaningful conversation, you look over at the Someone . . . and he is texting. That’s what I mean by flat. I was expecting so much more, and there just wasn’t.

However, I don’t think it’s necessarily the radish’s fault. I believe this dish can be improved to have all the complexity a curry ought to have. It’s just a matter of understanding. Let’s go back to the problem of the Someone and the French movie. If you resist jumping to conclusions (You useless human being! You’re not good for anything but passing the time in the check out line!), you might find out that the Someone is nearsighted and couldn’t read any of the subtitles and therefore didn’t know what was going on since the first “bonjour.” So, take a minute to understand the radish instead of accusing it like I did (You useless vegetable! You’re not good for anything but bagged salad!). You see, what I didn’t realize was that radishes mellow out as they are cooked, taking on the flavor of whatever they are cooked in, much like tofu. Far from useless, this can be an appealing quality. Think of the possibilities. Radishes can now go in all kinds of things – from spaghetti sauce to jambalaya – without overpowering it. It just means you have to pay extra attention to the cooking medium, which I did not do for this dish.

What follows is the recipe I used for this dish. In italics are my suggestions for adding flavor to sauce and enhancing the curry overall.

Radish Curry

15 radishes with greens
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 dried jalapeno peppers, minced
2 tsp curry powder
1 tbs crushed coriander seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 cup crushed tomatoes (fresh if in season, or from a can)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 can coconut milk
salt and pepper
Unsweetened coconut flakes

Clean the radishes and cut them as you would slice an apple. Clean the leaves, if you want to use them in the dish, and I highly suggest that you do. Not only do they add flavor, but they also swing a punch of color. Tear or cut them into smallish pieces. In a pan, add the coconut oil. When it is hot, add the mustard and coriander seeds. When the seeds splutter, add onions. Saute for 3-5 mins till they are translucent. Add the garlic and chilis, curry, and turmeric. Saute for about a minute or even less, until you can smell the garlic. Add the radishes, mix well and add salt. Cook, stirring frequently, till the radishes start to soften. Once the radishes seem soft, add the tomatoes, 1/4 cup of the cilantro, and coconut milk. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat to low, and cook, covered, until the sauce is thick and bubbly and the radishes are soft. This should take about 7-10 minutes. Add the greens, stir, and cook for another minute or two, till the greens are wilted and tender. Turn off the heat and add the rest of the cilantro. Serve over rice and garnish with coconut flakes.

Radish Tally: 21 down, 161 to go

Bread and Butter Radishes

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:51:23 +0000

Having had my first real radish just this Friday, I felt it was necessary to spend some one on one time with the vegetable, without any distracting flavors. I was a little apprehensive, in the same way you would be if you had met Someone in line at the grocery store and decided to go out to dinner together. Sure, he’s charming now, but can he sustain hours-long conversation? Or will his wit just rub off like peach fuzz, leaving a tough leathery skin? I had similar concerns for the radish. I liked what I’d tasted so far, but then again, there’s very few things that would taste bad straight out of the field in the middle of a long hot day of farming. Kind of like how anybody could be charming compared to vapid magazine covers and bored check out clerks in a grocery line. Would my radishes be able to sustain their beguiling quality away from the farm? More importantly, would Mr. Quotidian like them?

Yes and . . . Yes! I decided to start simply on Sunday morning with buttered toast and radish slices. I’d heard of people making radish sandwiches before and thought it would be a good way to ease Mr. Quotidian, always the skeptical one, into the company of radishes. It worked. I was even surprised by how good they were. The creaminess of the butter mellowed the radish’s fieriness, much like a glass of wine could blunt a rapacious wit. And the toast, like an unobtrusive waiter, was the perfect delivery for the subtle flavors.

Because this dish is so simple, make sure you use good quality ingredients. Fresh radishes, not old wrinkly ones. Real butter, not margarine. And whatever kind of toast makes you happy. (Even though the day old Jimmy John’s bread is about as nutritionally vapid as the magazine covers in the check out line, it makes some killer toast.) I served this as part of our Sunday brunch, which also included Creamed Baby Beet Greens with Poached Eggs. (Recipe coming soon!)

Bread and Butter Radishes for Two

2 slices of your favorite bread
4 radishes, greens reserved for another use
Butter
Salt (opt)

Toast your bread and slice the radishes. I like thicker slices because my bread was thicker. If you slice them too thinly, you will miss out on the satisfying crunch later on. When the toast is done, let it cool for a few minutes. Then spread the butter in as thick of a layer as you are comfortable with. Although normally I like toast with the butter melted into it, for this application I prefer a thick layer of butter. The kind that will show teeth marks. It will also keep the radish slices from slipping off as you eat. Arrange the radish slices in pleasing pattern on the toast. Sprinkle with a little salt, if desired, and enjoy!

Radish Tally: 4 Down, 177 to go

The Ravishing Radish Challenge

Jana@ Collected Quotidian — Sun, 02 May 2010 19:17:14 +0000

On Friday, City Roots harvested over 80 pounds of beauty in the form of these Easter Egg Radishes. We grew them alongside the carrots as a companion crop. Fast growing radishes help the slow growing carrots by keeping the soil from crusting over before they germinate and shading out most weeds with their leaves. They also help mark rows as carrot tops can be hard to see.

As other volunteers brought in crate after crate of radishes for me to arrange, I began to feel like I was working in a candy shop. Such vibrant lollipop-like colors are usually confined to the air conditioned candy aisle at the supermarket, not a hot field. For awhile, I felt more like an artist than a farmer, lining the pearly white with the lipstick red and hanging the amethyst purple next to the blushed pink. A lady at the farmer’s market said the next day that they are pretty enough to put in a bowl as a centerpiece, forget about eating them. But I have to disagree. Something so beautiful deserves to eaten, not roll around in bowl till they’re old and wrinkly.

All of my previous experience with radishes has been of the bagged salad variety. So, spurred on by the current beauty and abundance, I rubbed the dirt off of one and took my first bite of a real radish. True to their siren song of colors, my radish began as cool and enticingly crunchy as a cucumber. But then, once I’d committed and swallowed, it threatened to drown my adventure seeking taste buds in a fiery wasabi-like spiciness. I was hooked.

But what do you do with radishes? Especially 80 pounds worth? You can only slice so many radishes over a salad. As I’ve written about before, dilemmas like this are an unavoidable part of eating seasonally. Like the waves of lettuce that crash over market stalls in the spring, something must be done with this harvest. We don’t have the luxury of nibbling a little radish now and then, confident that they will still be lining grocery store shelves when we want them again. They are here now and, like a beautiful woman that passes quickly in the street, demand our attention.

So again, what do you do with radishes? That is what I intend to find out. After the market, I brought home a crate of radishes. To put my money where my locavorian mouth is, I entered myself in . . .

The Ravishing Radish Challenge
The Goal: To use up 9 lbs. 8oz. of radishes by creating dishes centered around the beguiling quality of the radish
The Contestants: Me and 181 radishes
The Rules:
1. All parts of the radish must be used. This includes the greens.
2. Only 10% of the total weight of radishes may be relegated to compost.
3. Each day must have unique recipes. No repeats of successful dishes.
4. Complete recipes must be posted daily.
5. The challenge must be completed within seven days.

Bring it on.