CSA: Cooking with radish

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

Now that I’m on this journey of exploring new kinds of vegetables, I am happy to report that I got through my first box containing rhubarb, bibb lettuce, radish, Japanese radish, romaine lettuce, bok choy, beets with only a half head of lettuce leftover. It is quite overwhelming when you have a lot of fresh produce to use before it goes bad!

This week I learned how to store lettuce – leave it unwashed, in a plastic bag, with a wet paper towel and change the towel every few days. If you do this, the lettuce will last for up to a week. It’s also super important to wash everything carefully to get all the dirt right before eating!

I wanted to add a little tidbit about radishes from the farm website and found this:

“This root vegetable is a relative of the turnip and horseradish. The elongated pink and white roots are usually eaten raw as an appetizer or in salads, and the leaves are usually not edible.”

Say what??

I’m such a dork. I found this out AFTER I ate it. So that explains the tough texture of the leaves!! I mixed in a handful of watercress that I had from earlier to the dish, which helped, but yeah… the leaves weren’t particularly tasty. I remember eating it and thinking, something is not quite right. Try mixing the radish part with a different kind of green, like spinach or watercress.

Aren’t you glad that I make these mistakes for you to learn from?

To cook – I just threw everything into a pan with olive oil and garlic. I added a hint of balsamic vinegar. The radish looks orange when cooked. I found the color contrast interesting, so I added thinly sliced raw radishes on top.

Feel free to share your favorite radish recipes!