Radish and Potato Salad--Into Spring

After reading the recipe below, someone may wonder why, of all the ingredients, just radish is on the front picture. The answer is because radish was the reason why I came up with this salad. I bought a fresh bunch of it, smooth and beautifully purple, just one more time to convince myself that my kids do not like it.

To me, radish brings the sweetest childhood memories of spring when I watched it grow in our garden, to pull it later from the soil, once it got suddenly big enough, often times overnight. Then we washed it, sliced it, and ate. Sometimes it was just radish on bread with butter and salt on top. Sometimes it was sliced over a spread of cream cheese or added to cottage cheese, together with English cucumber and chives. It was incredibly crunchy, peppery and gently spicy, but somewhat spicier than the one I am buying now--when I ate the radish from my garden, I could feel a slight pinch on the tip of the tongue.

I still like radish a lot and use it eagerly in salads, especially in the early spring. I came up with this salad by adding almost every crunchy vegetable that I could find in my refrigerator. It came out very crunchy, but the young baby potatoes I added gave it nice softness in mild contrast to the radish and the rest of it. I make this salad quite often these days and eat for lunch.

Radish and Potato Salad
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 bunch of radish, cut into small cubes,
1 cup yellow bell pepper (it is important for it to be yellow as I find it more delicate), cut in small square pieces,
1 cup of cucumber, cut into cubes,
3-4 celery sticks cut into thin slices,
half a bunch onion spring chopped,
1/4 cup fresh dill chopped,
2 cups cooked baby potatoes cut in half, or bigger potatoes cut into cubes.

Dressing:
3 tbsp olive oil,
1 tbsp mustard,
1 tsp sugar,
2 tbsp white wine vinegar,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Place all the vegetable cut into small, similar size cubes in a large bowl.
2. Make dressing in a small bowl by stirring all ingredients until they form a smooth, thick sauce.
3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables, mix, let it infuse for 30 minutes and serve.

Purple Radish Salad--To Try or to Behold

Last week for the first time ever I saw a purple radish. It looked a little bit like an UFO, or a mole that forgot to hide in his hole and stayed in the sun. I bought it for its looks, as a culinary curiosity, having no idea what to expect in terms of taste and how to cook it. And I am glad I did, as with a change of seasons I do not feel very creative in the kitchen.

Or rather, I am very creative but disorganized, so I cook as always, but just do not feel like measuring and recording everything. So of course I cannot make a post out of it, saying "a little bit of this" and "a little bit of that", even though the results are pretty nice.

But this radish came to my rescue and I would like to talk about it just because of its magnificent purple color, so typical of many fruits and vegetable with a blue pigment that are rich in antioxidants. It has a surprisingly mild, almost sweet taste with a kind of peppery aftertaste. Now that I tried it, I would suggest serving it raw, mostly in salads, as a source of iron and vitamins.

I made an Asian style salad, just to capture the aesthetic qualities of this beautiful tuber. I used also enoki mushrooms for contrast, which most of all, are recommended to be eaten raw. The whole salad was very delicate so I spiced it up with a dressing made of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and rice bran oil, and I topped it with a spoon of wasabi.

I am not sure I would be able to talk anyone one into that salad, but since purple radish is healthy and very inexpensive, it is worth to toss some of it into our regular salads, maybe add to a yogurt sauce or on top of cottage cheese, for color and crunchiness. Or maybe as I made it but differently arranged and mixed. And if you not feel like trying it just look how pretty it is. After adding some vinegar it changed color from a dark purple into more pink.

Purple Radish Salad

Ingredients:
One small purple radish, sliced or shredded,
a bunch of enoki mushrooms,
slices of English cucumber,
1/2 small onion, finely sliced,
1 tbsp rice vinegar,
1 tbsp soy sauce,
2 tbsp rice bran oil,
salt and freshly ground pepper,
a pinch of sugar,
chopped chives and a dollop of wasabi mayonnaise (optional).

Preparation:
1. Mix all the vegetables or layer them as I did.
2. Make a dressing and pour over the salad.
3. Decorate with chives, black sesame seeds, and wasabi mayonnaise.