Eating Radishes à la française

 

When we first received black radishes in our weekly produce box, I referred to my go-to resource, the Bitt-man’s How to Cook Everything. He suggested eating them sliced with butter, salt, and pepper.

Huh?

My only previous encounters with radishes had been as shiny globes in mounds at salad bars, spicy slices in a restaurant garden salad, or the fastest growing vegetable that we never had any idea what to do with in our garden. Helene at French Foodie Baby had mentioned eating radishes with butter as had Karen in French Kids Eat Everything. But how? Melted on top? Cold in slices? How much per radish? I was quickly paralyzed by my overanalysis of such a simple vegetable and it’s most simple preparation.

The Black Radishes long gone, we received a bunch of red radishes this week, and I resolved to eat them immediately according to the preparation Dorie Greenspan provides in Around My French Table (drool-inducingly gorgeous, this is a book that will jump from temporary visitor, aka library book, to permanent resident in my home):

“If you want to serve radishes in the French style, wash them well, and if they came with stems and leaves, trim their topknots, leaving just enough greenery to serve as handles. Drop the radishes into a bowl of ice water and keep them there until serving. (You can even serve them on ice.) Serve the radishes whole accompanied by very soft butter for spreading on the radishes and a bowl of sea salt, preferably fleur de sel, for dipping; small rounds of dark bread or baguette are optional.”

Well, in 4 hours, our refrigerator froze our radishes; so I didn’t put them on ice. I carved little slices out of them, filled the slices with butter, and salted (and peppered) them. They were a quick, simple, refreshing veggie starter. I will never dip a radish in ranch again. Thanks to Dorie for the cure for my analysis paralysis. Now bring on the butter!

Food and Life in 2013: From Obligation to Opportunity

2013 started at the intersection of French Kids Eat Everythingand The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life.

At 6 months, our daughter, Mademoiselle M*, was ready for solid foods and a schedule, and frankly, so were my husband, Monsieur M, and I. Since we’d been married, we’d been eating catch as catch can, often in front of the television, never on a schedule, and usually much later than our grumbling stomachs told us we should be. Meals were a chore, an obligation, a drag. Despite lists and intentions, we never seemed to get a plan together in time, and were left at 3 in the afternoon trying to piece together lunch from whatever scraps we were able to find in our stocked, but inefficient, pantry. (How is it that the pantry can be full and yet, there’s nothing to eat?) If we ate in, it was one of 2 or 3 meals that started with something that required defrosting and a can opener. Invariably, we ended up eating out…a lot.

Financial burden aside, the arrival of Mlle M in June of last year made eating out a bit more…complicated. Gone were the days when we could hop in the car on a whim and drive to our favorite spot in town. Sleeping schedules, constant supervision, and unpredictable bodily functions made travel, even 15 minutes away, seem like an expedition to Everest with Mlle. Cooking at home started to look more appealing.

Now, you have to understand, neither Monsieur nor I were devoid of skill in the kitchen. Monsieur can cook meat to perfection on just about any flame producing device you can imagine, and in college, some of the co-inhabitants from my freshman dormitory, erected a tiny shrine in their first off-campus kitchen, a photo of me featured prominently in the center. Instead of WWJD, in their kitchen, it was WWMD.

At some point, though, over countless last minute meals, a tired routine of lackluster standards, and unnumbered tiny disappointments, we had lost the will to cook. After a long separation from cooking our own meals, how could we possibly reconcile with our kitchen? Not only for ourselves, but now, for our daughter as well. It seemed it might be hopeless.

It’s about this time that Karen Le Billon released French Kids Eat Everything and Tim Ferriss released The 4-Hour Chef.

I imagine if Karen and Tim ever met, they would eye one another suspiciously and then go about their daily business, but they have more in common than one might originally imagine. A common theme runs through their books–food and eating can transform our daily experience of life from average to extraordinary. This simple act, of nourishing ourselves, that we must complete daily, is not an obligation, but an opportunity–to celebrate the best of life every day.

An opportunity presented, hoever, is not an opportunity taken, and, in the U.S. especially, food has been reduced from a transcendent experience to a base requirement for survival, composed of certain requisite calorie intake and the appropriate proportions of carbs, fats, and proteins, ideally packaged for the highest level of efficiency and convenience possible. Many of our most popular foods are mass produced in facilities where “food” is a term you will hear less often than “product,” and “waste” or “offal” is shoveled off the floor and into countless waste bins. If we could drink our daily nutritional requirements in the United States, we would (and some people probably do. SlimFast, anyone?). While our family ate mostly unprocessed food, we still leaned more toward the “convenience and optimized nutrition at the expense of flavor and variety” end of the spectrum.

This is not the world of food that I wanted Mademoiselle to inherit. I wanted her to live in the world of food where one closes their eyes to get a better sense of the flavor and texture of what they’re eating. Where meals leave one with the distinct sense, not that hunger has been pacified, but that Life Is Wonderful.

So, inspired by Karen’s example, we started with 3 goals. A tablecloth at every meal, a cheese course, and a commitment to variety.

This blog is about how those 3 small commitments are transforming, not only our meals, but our entire lives.

*To be totally transparent, none of us are French, or of French descent. Monsieur is Venezuelan, Madame is many generation American, and Mademoiselle is 100% Texan.