Thursday, June 28, 2012

Radish Salad

Blog's Category: USSR-era Recipes, My Staple Food


Intro
It was a big surprise for me when I find out that here, in US, radish is used mostly cooked. The way radish traditionally used in Eastern Europe is fresh, in salads. The recipe below is the simple radish salad, with a lot of green onions. For us it was symbolizing spring that has come. This salad was always served at May 1st celebration gatherings (known as International  Worker's Day or May Day for all of us who survived USSR :)).

Variations
- Fresh dill is often added to this salad. I guess it's really hard to tell which version is better: with dill or without.
- Sometimes this salad is dressed with olive oil and splash of vinegar but it is not my "cup of tea" at all. Sour cream is the must in my opinion.
- Also instead of slicing radishes you can grate them. It makes great salad too!

Taste Description
It's a crunchy and juicy goodness, a little bit spicy (actually depends on radish spiciness) and tangy, with a soft flavor of green onion and creaminess of sour cream. This salad has to be generously salted as saltiness has to be part of the game here.

How to Serve
Serve right away, as side salad to your main course. As with many fresh salads, this salad can not be prepared in advance - radish gives away a lot of juices and will become soggy if let it stay longer.


Radish Salad

Serves 8 as a side salad 

20-30 radishes, sliced
4-6 green onions (more-better)
4 tbs sour cream
salt
- Mix radishes with onion, sour cream and salt and enjoy! Yes, this simple!

Tips
- To slice your radish I use my mandoline slicer - just be careful with this tool. Also you can use knife. The fastest way to prepare radishes though is to grate them with electric grater!

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IN PICTURES

As always with vegetables, cleaning, peeling and chopping takes the most of the time.

I use mandoline slicer to slice radish. After two serious cuts to my fingers I'm a mandoline pro now :)





Picture-perfect serving

As I mentioned above, salad becomes soggy and kind of watery after a while, less crunchy but still awesomely delicious.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the inspiration for a simple use of radishes. I have been getting a lot of radishes in my CSA share this year & always looking for different ways to use them up :-)

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    Replies
    1. I hope you'll like it! BTW, thank you for giving me an idea of CSA - I never heard about it before.. Turned out I have great options in my area and may try it (I cook a lot).
      Also, just one note - we eat radishes fresh just dipping them in sour cream and salt, or even without anything - very healthy way to go :)

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