Time for a recipe!- Iron Chef RADISH!

Today, Melanie and Lorie decided it was time for a harvest. The garden is becoming quite impressive, and we are in the danger zone for having our lettuce bolt and starting seeding. After that, it's too bitter to eat. So, salads are being eaten at many meals. A large bag of lettuce was delivered to a friend. Also, we went into "harvest all the radishes" mode. After poking around in the garden, Melanie realized that the radishes were HUGE! We'd never seen radishes this big. We picked enough to make three recipes worth, and it also will allow room for some of the smaller radish plants to spread and grow a bit more. The problem was simple-- what to do with the radish tops. Melanie dug around and found a recipe for radish top soup. It tastes pretty good. It's not as "radishy" as one would think. It almost tastes like a potato leek soup. We substituted vegetable broth for the chicken broth and used half and half instead of heavy whipping cream.

INGREDIENTS:
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, diced
2 medium potatoes, sliced
4 cups raw radish greens 4 cups veggie broth
1/3 cup half and half
5 radishes, sliced

DIRECTIONS:
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion, and saute until tender. Mix in the potatoes and radish greens, coating them with the butter. Pour in veggie broth. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes.
2. Allow the soup mixture to cool slightly, and transfer to a blender. Blend until smooth.
3. Return the mixture to the saucepan. Mix in the half and half. Cook and stir until well blended. Serve with radish slices.



After this, Melanie decided to move to step two in Operation Radish. Out came the cream cheese, and the radish dip was created! SOOOooooooooooo delicious! If you like garlic, this is the recipe for you! Let's just say that even the cats don't want to sleep near Melanie's breath this evening.

INGREDIENTS:
4 cloves garlic, peeled
6 radishes, quartered
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

DIRECTIONS:
1. Place garlic in the container of a food processor, and pulse until finely minced. Add radishes, and mince. Add cream cheese, and mix until well blended. Transfer to a serving dish, and chill until serving.



As for the rest of the garden, Lorie is enjoying all the beautiful flowers! While Melanie was really charged with making the veggies happen, Lorie is the flower queen, and has quite a knack for picking out some beautiful perennials. Look at this gorgeous iris!

Tomorrow, we'll have more updates. There is another blog-garden tour planned as well as a Radish Coleslaw recipe in the works. In the meantime, Melanie's going to de-vampire the county with her dragon garlic/radish breath.