Friday: An oldie but a goodie

 

Cucumber-purslane salad with chickpeas and pink radish. 

This is our first purslane of the season - we like to make this cool salad with it, dressed in some lemon juice and olive oil.

Wednesday: Udon and fishballs

 

Sardine "meatball" soup with pink Asian radish, mibuna and udon noodles.

We found this recipe for a noodle soup with mibuna, which is apparently a characteristic vegetable of Kyoto, Japan.  The meatballs are made of chopped sardine (we used tinned, but fresh would probably have produced a better texture), flour, miso paste and ginger.  The vegetables are simmered in a dashi broth, and then the "meatballs" are added and simmered until they are warmed through.  The soup broth is finally flavored with a bit more miso.

Dashi is one of the basic ingredients in Japanese cuisine - it is a stock made of simmered seaweed and bonito fish flakes.  We purchased an "instant" dried dashi powder to save a little labor, but one of these days we should probably invest in the real ingredients.  For what it's worth, we had been making miso soup for years with just miso paste added to the water, and it REALLY is better with the dashi.

Thursday: Left behind

Fried rice with bok choy, garlic chives and pink radishes.

Lizz was out of town for her college reunion, so I threw together an easy dinner which had the bonus of using up leftover rice: a quick stir-fry of day-old rice and fresh veggies, with a beaten egg mixed in to transform it into fried rice.

Sunday: Radical radishes

Braised heirloom radishes with moong dal on basmati rice.

These mixed heirloom radishes were too pretty not to buy: the bunch contained red, purple, pink and white small radishes, plus a few that were light brown and had a rough texture, like a "golden russet" apple.  We didn't realize until now that radishes are actually a spring vegetable.  To tone down their spiciness, we braised the radishes along with their tops, which were in good shape.  Balsamic vinegar is not a traditional Indian ingredient but this still worked well as a vegetable dish to pair with moong dal.

Saturday: Tea Sandwiches

Tea sandwiches with several fillings: egg salad, smoked salmon-dill-caper, red radish, watercress, and marinated cucumber.

For a change of pace, this meal was almost entirely NON-local (with the exception of the egg salad we made, which included some local pickles from Rick's Picks, and the smoked Atlantic salmon). But Santa promised Lizz's parents some tea sandwiches, and tea sandwiches are what they got!

Tea sandwiches are generally made with very thin-sliced soft white bread from which the crusts have been removed, and usually contain mayonnaise. They can have many types of fillings, but we made a few classic ones. The radishes were sliced into slim rounds, salted and left to sit for twenty minutes or so, and then rinsed. This process removes a little of the bitterness and makes them crisp.

Our favorite may have been the cucumbers, which we marinated in this improvised manner: two medium-large cucumbers were peeled and sliced as finely as possible. Then we mixed together two minced garlic cloves, about four tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, the juice of one entire lemon, about 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne, and some salt to taste. The cucumbers were added, stirred in thoroughly, and left to marinate for maybe twenty minutes to a half hour. We stirred the mixture every once in a while; at first the liquid collected at the bottom, but it accumulated as the cukes marinated.

Thursday: Mispoona Two Ways

Buckwheat noodles, mispoona, and radishes with tart tofu-mispoona dressing.

Mispoona is a cross between mizuna, a Japanese mustard green, and Tatsoi, another brassica family member. This was our first time cooking with it.

In this recipe, mispoona greens are blended with soft tofu, lemon juice, and lemon zest to make a sour, bright-green dressing. The remaining mispoona is chopped coarsely and used as a bed for the soba (Japanese buckwheat) noodles. Radishes and sesame seeds act as garnishes. Interestingly, although red radishes are relatively spicy on their own, they are completely tamed by the tofu-based dressing. (Dairy seems to have the same effect.)

Most importantly, this recipe provides an opportunity to show off our stacking pyrex bowl set. Here's the mise-en-scene:

Saturday sandwiches

After some successful greenmarketing we made these quick sandwiches of Rappleree cheese, Persian cukes, purple radishes and grainy mustard on sourdough bread. For a flavor contrast we added a few groundcherries (also called "husk cherries") on the side.

Groundcherries come "individually wrapped," as you can see above - inside, they're delicious little yellow orbs with a texture like a tiny, firm tomato and a sweet flavor reminiscent of pineapple:


Unwrapped groundcherry with radish and cucumber for scale

They're only available at this time of year and we highly recommend them.

Saturday picnic lunch

A friend of ours was dogsitting, so we headed out to Morningside Park today for some idyllic doggie picnic time. The sandwiches we brought were made with fresh bread from the greenmarket, Vivace Bambino cheese, grainy mustard, lemon cukes, and purple radish sprouts.

The bean salad incorporated the first sweet peppers we've bought this year:



Lemon cukes, besides being yellow and lemon-shaped, do actually taste a bit less grassy and more lemon-like than an average cucumber. They have a nice dense consistency, whiteish flesh, and their seeds are surrounded by neon green jelly. Here is a lemon cuke looming ominously before the peppers:



Our white bean salad included the diced sweet peppers, minced shallot, garlic scapes, cilantro, parsley, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice.

Leisurely Saturday lunch

Shortly after this picture was taken, we assembled these ingredients into delicious levain-Persian cuke-Vivace Bambino-radish sandwiches, tied together by a thin layer of dijon mustard.