Radishes - A New Way

Radishes are by far the easiest thing to grow in our garden.  They grow fast - and they'll get away from you.  Before you know it they are HUGE.  These are so big and ugly!

We eat them in salads, but mostly, we make a spicy radish dip.  We take about six of them and mince them up in a food processer along with 6 cloves of garlic.  Then we'll throw in a block of cream cheese.  Finally, we'll add salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika and some habanero pepper flakes.  That's it!  It makes a perfect dip for dipping cut up carrots into or we'll spread it on crackers or french bread.  It doesn't last long.  It has become a family favorite.

But when you have an over-abundance of them, you've got to look for new ideas.  We'll try lacto-fermented radishes, much like we do with carrots, cucumber, or cabbage.  First we sliced up the radishes in little chunks like you might do when making pickles.  Then you make a brine by adding 2 teaspoons sea salt to 2 cups water.  Then we added 1/4 of whey that's leftover from yoghurt making.  That acts as a preservative.  We add some garlic cloves to the bottom and then pack the jars tightly with the cut up radishes and pour the brine over them making sure the radishes are submerged by placing some glass canning weights on top.

We leave the jars at room temperature for 5-7 days and then place them in the fridge.  

We'll likely make more radish dip, but thought we'd add this to our radish repertoire. 

From the Garden - Spicy Radish Dip

Radishes are one of the fastest maturing crops in the garden.  You can plant them and in no time at all they are ready to harvest.  Radishes are good sliced thin in salads.  We've even pickled some.  But our favorite way to eat radishes are in a quick and easy, tasty and spicy fresh garden dip.  The bushy greens in the photo down below is our mini patch of radishes.  And they are ready - past time for being ready, actually.

The first item in the radish row isn't a radish, though.  It's a celery plant.  This is the first celery I've been able to grow from seed in the garden.  We've grown some from cuttings from a store-bought one, but this one grew from a seed.  Come to think of it, this celery would be excellent for using in the dip we're making today.

I'm going to pull out four of the biggest radishes for our dip.  There's a big, fat one right there.

I wash them off and then throw the greens to the cows, goats and chickens.  

I was about to go in when I noticed that two of our 300 onions had gone to flower.  See them?

I pulled them up as I've learned that once onions go to flower, you should pull them and eat the bulbs as quickly as possible as they don't last or store well.  I chopped off the tops of these little Red Creole onions.  I have a plan for them.

I cubed up the radishes and put them in the old food processor.

Along with the radishes, we dropped some fresh parsley, four cloves of garlic and I decided to add one of the Creole onions as a new addition to the dip.

In a bowl, we softened a block of cream cheese and added jalapeno pepper powder and more minced onion.

I sliced up some Atomic Red Carrots and Some Uzbek Yellow carrots that we had just pulled.  We'll use these for dipping into the radish dip.

We folded the cream cheese mixture into the radish mixture and stirred up read good.

Spicy Radish Dip, ready for the taste test...

Delicious!  Only thing I'd change is (believe it or not) NOT putting the onions in the dip.  It didn't taste bad.  It tasted good, but it changed the ordinarily creamy dip into a chunky dip.  The texture just wasn't the same.  Tricia and I ate this dip yesterday evening.  The bowl of radish dip with fresh carrots didn't make it 24 hours before we were cleaning the bowl.  It's time to make some more.

Making Radish Dip

If there is anything easier than growing radishes, I haven't found it.  The trouble with radish growing,  is how many different things can you do with all the radishes you grow?  I mean, they are okay in a salad, but what else can you do with your bumper crop of radishes?  I'll show you in just a minute.

Intermixed with the random assortment of winter weeds is a nice, healthy crop of radishes.  I'll get around to weeding the radish plot later.  They are young and tender - about the size of your thumb.

I ventured out in the misting rain and picked a nice little handful of some of the biggest ones, cleaned them up in the rainwater barrel and fed the radish greens to the cows.  The radishes were brilliant red with white bottoms.

I had plans for these little radishes.  In our 'snack drawer,' I spotted a box of Ritz crackers that Tricia bought and it gave me an idea to make some radish dip.  We love this stuff and haven't found anyone who doesn't.  It is the simplest thing to put together.  You need the following ingredients:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
6 radishes (I added a couple more since these were small)
4 cloves garlic, peeled
salt and pepper to taste
chili powder (optional)

First thing you want to do is to mince your radishes and garlic in a food processor.  Don't puree it, just mince it up.

Then, simply pour the minced garlic and radishes into a bowl that contains your softened cream cheese and stir with a spoon.  You might think about putting this in the food processor to mix, but don't do it!  We tried that and found that it makes the dip too much of a liquid consistency that we didn't like.  Just stir it all with a spoon, adding salt and pepper to taste and a dash of chili powder, if desired.

Put it in the refrigerator to chill and then bust open a sleeve of Ritz crackers and scoop up some dip with a cracker.  I promise you'll enjoy it!

You may want to ration it, though...

Radish dip disappears quickly.  Fortunately, we have more radishes growing in the garden!