at the market: radishes

 Radish-es! (I’m singing here, a little off key)
I can not stop singing your praises. You are, in essence, love with a root and a leaf. Round or cylindrical, sensual in your crunch and shocking bite, I will love you forever.

 These, in no particular order, are some of my favorite things about radishes.

1. Radishes get spicier as the season moves in. It is the heat and sun that gives heat to your radishes. So in April? Mild. In June? Wowsa.

2. Yes, you can eat the greens! Saute with garlic!

3. Radish butter.

4. I love that there is a radish called the French Breakfast Radish.  I believe that this name has inspired many people, including myself, to eat radishes for breakfast.

5. This is a very exciting way to use salt.

6. Radishes are wonderful to grow. Sow your seeds, don’t even thin them out, and the radishes will be up before you can blink. When they start to show themselves poking out of the ground, take your pick.

7. Roasted radishes. Yes, Nigel Slater does say that we should “ignore any suggestion of cooking them,” and he claims that “the writer is surely deluded.” But still, roasted radishes.

8. Radish dip. On a bagel.

9. And then of course, there is the fanciness of the radish. Blame it in the French for elevating this anything but ordinary mustard. 

Radish-es!