Our Edible Landscape

In our garden, radishes are one of the most valuable vegetables we grow.

Our six-year-old (a.k.a. The Radish Man) loves radishes. He plants them, talks to them, harvests them, and loves to eat them. He freely offers advice, to anyone who will listen, on the perfect way to cook radishes. COOK? We’ll get to that later.

The radish man also loves rainbows. Because of this, we are always keeping our eyes open for new vegetable varieties that are in unusual colors. When I say “new”, I mean “newly discovered by us”. Most of the colorful varieties we grow are actually heirlooms, not the new colored hybrids.

When we began our radish adventure, we started with the typical salad-type radishes most Americans are used to seeing. We then expanded into the different colored salad radishes we could find in the catalogs. Little did we know that we were on the verge of beginning a world-wide expedition from our backyard garden. I went online and discovered websites that offered radishes from countries like Germany, Italy, France, China, Japan, and Spain. Not only were these varieties new to us, but there were different categories of radishes we never knew existed.

We were now discovering long radishes that looked like carrots, winter-storage radishes that grow to huge proportions and can be stored in a root cellar, radishes that are sweet and are not just white on the inside, and daikon radishes that were different than just the huge white mammoths we saw at the Asian market. Then we found out you could eat the radish greens and some radish seed pods!

Who would have thought that planting a packet of cherry belle radishes would have taken us on a journey around the world? It opened our minds to culinary possibilities we would have never dreamed of if we just bought our radishes from the local grocery store.

Radishes we grow in our garden include:
Red – Japanese Long Scarlet, Japan
Yellow –Zlata, Poland
Green - Green Meat, China
Blue - Hilds blauer, Germany
Purple - Purple Olive Shaped, France
Black - Round Black Spanish, Spain?
White - Ice Candle, Candela di Ghiaccio, Italy
We are still searching for an orange one, but have not heard of one yet…

Sautéed Radishes
Radish Man’s Favorite
Place two cups of sliced radishes into a sautéing pan (radishes are sliced into half-inch thick pieces). Chop up ½ onion. Sautee radishes and onions with a little butter. Add 1 teaspoon curry powder and ½ teaspoon seasoned salt. Radishes are finished when fork-tender and they begin to just start browning. Serve on a bed of finely- shredded cheddar cheese. Grind sea salt over top to taste.

(The adults were not too crazy about this version, but The Radish Man keeps demanding it. I'm not sure any other kids would like it either...)

The Adult’s Favorite
Place two cups of sliced radishes into a sautéing pan (radishes are sliced into half-inch thick pieces). Chop up ½ onion and about the same volume of fresh shiitake mushrooms. Sautee everything with a little butter and season salt to taste. Radishes are finished when fork-tender and they begin to just start browning. Serve with freshly-shredded parmesan cheese on top.

Of course, you can always dip slices in salt, eat them plain, or add slices to a salad. The famous butter and radish sandwich also comes to mind, although I personally have never tried it.