A Radish Sandwich

Bill and I got this amazing crop of radishes – our very first joint vegetable.  And the question became what to do with them.  After our sweat and tears (or just Bill’s sweat) our crop flourished without thinking too much that neither of us are big fans of radishes.  Hmmm. 

Dad grew up on the farm and I’ve been having fun telling him about the small-scale effort as growers going on in Bill’s backyard.  He told me that when he was younger he loved radish sandwiches, with a thick piece of bread, some butter, and some fresh sliced radishes.  That sounded pretty good for our first attempt at cooking with our very own produce. 

Meanwhile my friend Lannae has been telling me about the joys of homemade butter.  The only time I’ve ever made my own butter was during the one week of summer when my brother and I went to “little prairie school house” for a week of pioneer schoolhouse fun.  We made butter by churning it or taking turns shaking it in a jar, and then snacking on Saltines and fresh butter.  Lannae’s method (found here) is much easier.  Step 1: Pour cream in the food processor, Step 2: Turn it on,  Step 3 rinse and enjoy.  Ok, there’s a little more detail than that, but not much.

So we hit up the Turnip Truck on our way home one evening and grabbed some cream and bread.  We tried to get Hatcher Farms cream for our project, it comes from a farm south of Nashville.  The shelf was wiped clean out.  No luck.  So instead we ended up with something from "Organic Valley".  It's ok, cause it was still delicious.  And then bread from Silke's in Clarksville.  Super Yummy.  Suspiciously, Bill and I snuck out THE DAY AFTER our radish sandwich project to the Top Chef Tour at the Farmers Market and caught one of the quickfire challenges.  The cream they had on hand was all Hatcher Farms!!!  I wonder if that's why there wasn't any available at the 'Truck.  

Supplies - minus radishes

 The Icicle Radishes all sliced up.  Aren't they pretty?  I think the look like snow flakes or little ice crystals.  Or Christmas ornaments.  Taste-bitter Look-Gorgeous.

Sliced radishes

 Poured the cream in, hit the on switch and let it roll for a couple minutes.  It went faster than some of YouTube videos described it taking to separate the butter from the buttermilk.  I think because it was a smaller batch.  It's so funny but it was like magic seeing the cream morph into something else.  And ta-da, there was butter!!

The separated product - butter and residual liquid

Draining and rinsing out the cream
Nice warm day needed pecan pie beer

 In the end we made two varieties: the standard straight out of the rinse butter, and then a lightly salted fresh basil variety (it gave us an excuse to clip some of the basil as it was getting heavy).

Version 1: Straight out of the blender, rinsed, spread on toasted multi-grain bread and topped with thinly sliced radishes.  Result: good but a little bit bland.  Lots of radish flavor, but not much butter flavor.  We toasted our culinary accomplishment with the beers

radish sandwiches with fresh butter "au naturale"

 Version 2: Same as above but the fresh butter was mixed with a little sea salt and chopped basil.  Verdict - AWESOME!  Oh my gosh.  Just a little pick me up, and I think I could be a radish sandwich convert!  It was amazing!!! Even Bill's roommates were starting to get excited about our garden-to-table culinary experiments.

And so inaugurates our first harvesting season from the back yard garden.  Not too bad a start.