Summer Sweets

Here is a new take on pickles for you to try. I found this in a cooking magazine that I picked up at the St Louis airport on my way to Baltimore in April. I love pickles and I love radishes, so it seemed like a win-win to me.
Some friends of ours have a great garden and had radishes coming out of their ears last week and donated a bag full to the cause.
The magazine raves that “However peculiar pickled radishes may sound, the piquant slices are divine. eat them along or sprinkle them on burgers or hot dogs." but I am rarely convinced by magazines.
I am, however, very prone to trying new and unusual things, so away I went after those radishes with the super sharp blade of my Kyocera ceramic knife! (yes, I know, I could do this with the slicing blade of my food processor, but that’s just a lot of parts to wash afterward, and I am not a fan of doing the dishes. However, if I was going to make more than a jar or two of these at a time, I may retract that statement.

Pickled Radishes
2 cups of sliced radishes (about 8 ounces)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

6 6-inch stems fresh dill (I used 3)
1 TB whole pink or black peppercorns (i had a 3 pepper mix that I used)

Thoroughly wash and slice the radishes and onions and place in a 1 quart jar.

In a bowl, stir together vinegar, sugar and salt until mixture dissolves. Pour mixture over radishes and onions. Add dill and peppercorns. (in retrospect, I think I would have added the dill and peppercorns FIRST so that I wasn't fighting with the fronds to keep them down while I screwed the lid on the jar.)

Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight before serving.

So, I left the jar to marinate in my fridge for a day, and the brine progressively sucked the redness out of the radishes and turned itself a lovely shade of fuchsia, leaving the vegetables themselves pure white. After a day or so, I cautiously opened the jar and plucked a vinegary slice out and sniffed it. Yep, smells like a pickle….and, oddly enough, like a radish, too. I plopped that bad boy in my mouth, and yes, it TASTES like a pickle….and like a radish, too! I ate another, you know, to check for consistency…. and another, for the benefit of Ginny who was vicariously taste testing through my phone receiver, and then another…. and another…and I made myself close the jar. Those pungent little suckers are just darn tasty. I have yet to decide what other applications they might have, other than just the late night snack craving of a pregnant woman in her late third trimester, but I think they are a keeper. If nothing else, I’m going to start putting them on all my relish trays.
Now, if I can figure out how to CAN them so I can make a bunch at a time and save them all year…..without having to cook them, because I think that might ruin it. Anyone?

**Oh, side note. I may have mad more radishes than I was supposed to (you know, because I’m always soooo precise when it comes to things like that….damned Italian roots…) but I ended up having to make twice the amount of bring for the amount of radishes I had, just to fill one quart jar. So, I guess my point is, you may want to be prepared for that possibility if you decide to try these.