On My Plate: Radishes

Something very bright and red was the first item to catch one’s eye last Saturday at Oxford’s Farmers Market. Could it be the first strawberries of the season? Alas, our local growers report that last week’s frost destroyed much of the local strawberry crop. The bright red produce at the 7 Wonders Farm table turned out to be the season’s first radishes.

This week’s column was to be an ode to local strawberries, including their intended marriage with the local rhubarb noted last week. The first rule of journalism: report what you see, not what you thought you would see. Perhaps some local strawberries will arrive in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, radishes unexpectedly claim the spotlight this week.

Country Living reports that “radishes can be divisive. Some folks find the peppery flavor of a good, spicy radish too overwhelming.” Country Living’s defense of radishes is vague: folks are “taken” with them because they add “visual appeal.” 

Shakespeare must have agreed with radish critics, because his rotund buffoon Falstaff uses “radish” more than once as an insult. He swears “I’m a bunch of radishes” were he to lie about fighting for King Henry, and he says that a judge looks like a “forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.” More than 200 years later, Thomas Carlyle appropriated the phrase without attribution when he referred to James Boswell’s critique of Samuel Johnson as a “poor, forked radish.”

On the other hand, Delish.com website suggests that radishes are being touted on TikTok as “the new cauliflower.” Some fashionable restaurants in Cincinnati, including Alara, Mita and Wildweed, have dishes that include radishes, though not at this time anywhere near the fuss over roasted cauliflower a few years ago. 

The New York Times website offers an astounding 106 radish recipes. To save you the trouble of scrolling through all 106 recipes, basically they do one of two things with the radishes. Cube them and throw them into whatever is being cooked, or slice them and add them to whatever salad is being composed.

A search through six French and four Italian cookbooks yielded no radish recipes, but Jamie Oliver’s “5 Ingredients” cookbook yielded three: one with beef, one with tuna and one with watermelon and feta cheese. The beef recipe was unappealing, as the three ingredients other than beef and radishes (note the title of Oliver’s book) were pomegranate seeds, preserved lemons and dukkah (a mix of ground almonds, coriander, cumin and sesame, according to the internet).

The absence of radish recipes in French cookbooks is simply explained. In my experience, the French have one way – and only one way – to eat a radish. Dip the radish in softened butter, sprinkle it with sea salt and eat it in no more than two bites. This is only served as an accompaniment to a pre-dinner aperitif. Unfortunately, this option does not work in a household closely watching the intake of fat and sodium.

The radishes newly arrived in our household will not be subjected to any of The New York Times 106 recipes. They will be sliced and placed atop a bed of lettuce also procured from 7 Wonders Farm. However, when preparing a salad to serve guests, I put sliced radishes in a separate bowl. As Country Living reports, radishes can be divisive, and our guests often leave them on their plate uneaten.

We may yet see local strawberries later this month.

James Rubenstein is president of the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press and professor emeritus of geography at Miami University.