Thursday, June 24, 2010

Radishes with Herbed Butter

Growing up, my mom always had a Tupperware container with cleaned radishes sitting in the fridge. My father would breeze by, pop a few in his mouth like candy, and then move along to wherever he happened to be going. Unusual, perhaps, but The Pit is also a radish fan, and occasionally takes a little baggy-full with him to work as a snack. Apparently his co-workers mock him, but I bet they wouldn't if they got a taste of this preparation. I modified the original recipe slightly, and oh man, did this turn out delicious. I made a main course too, but The Pit and I basically shared a buttered and be-radished baguette for dinner last night.

What you’ll need:
  • 1-2 bunches of radishes (or about 8 oz cleaned up in the little bags), sliced
  • ¼ lb unsalted butter, softened
  • 1-2 stalks of green onion, diced
  • 2-3 teaspoons parsley, diced
  • 2-3 teaspoons dill, diced
  • 1-2 teaspoons lemon juice (a few squeezes from half a lemon)
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 French baguette (or Trader Joe's Par-Baked Ficelle)
Steps:

1) Take the butter out of the fridge and leave it on a sunny windowsill to soften up.

2) Slice the radishes and dice the green onion, parsley, and dill. I went a little overboard with the parsley and green onion, and ended up using only about ½ of the amount shown below. On the other hand, I didn't have enough fresh dill, and supplemented with several shakes of the dried stuff.


3) Bake a par-baked Trader Joe’s baguette and slice. If you haven’t tried these yet, I highly recommend – you get two ficelles in a bag for $1.59, and they can sit in the fridge for weeks if need be. Then, when you have a craving for fresh hot bread, just pop one in the oven for 12-14 minutes. So good. If you use a regular baguette from the grocery store, I would slice and then toast the pieces slightly.

4) Mix together the butter, herbs, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. The original recipe recommended a hand mixer, but I had no problems with just a spoon.


5) Spread the herbed butter mixture over the baguette slices, and top with radish slices. Sprinkle with a little more kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.



6) Stuff your face.

2 comments:

  1. butter & bread look extremely yummy. am somewhat skeptical of radishes, though.

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  2. That is what my sister said too, but you are both wrong wrong wrong. I've now served this to multiple combinations of guests, and even Nikole, who had to eat this on gluten-free ass bread, agreed that the radishes were delicious.

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