Visual Tasting

Pbear and I grew up watching a lot of Disney movies and one of them was the famous story about Rapunzel (most probably..we watched it loong time ago ... haha). So when mama Rapunzel was pregnant with Rapunzel, she had this monstrous craving for a root vegetable. And of course in her state she only wanted to have that vegetable and of course it was grown in the good old witches' backyard.

So papa Rapunzel, worried about mama Rapunzel went to steal some of the vegetable. He eventually got caught by the witch and made a secret agreement with the witch that he would give away Rapunzel in exchange for mama Rapunzel's life....

So what we want to focus on here... is not on the story but on the vegetable. Yes the vegetable! Strange thing but Pbear and I always wondered what it is (even after growing up) and why mama Rapunzel was so darn crazy about it!

Of course about 10 odd years later we found a very similar looking vegetable. And it turned out to be a radish. We don't do radish at home, in fact the last time i had it was about 7 something years ago. Not that we hate it, but no one really thinks of it. But looking this thing from our memory and just how pretty it looked, we had to get it!

  So just a small background on this thing of beauty. This variety of radish is called "cherry belle," an appropriate name indeed :). It is also known as 'Mooli' in Hindi. It is widely consumed in asian countries like Japan, China, Korea, India etc. An interesting article on the radish 'culture' over the world can be found in this link-a. 

There are also a lot of health benefits relating to this vegetable some quick summary can be found in link-b. I wish it was also effective for the good old cholesterrrrroollllllllll.... but alas

link-c : tips on how to select a good bunch of radishes

link-d : last but not least some more recipes. (See mine first!  ;) )

SIMPLE ROASTED RADISH

Ingredients:

1. Radish (2 to 2.5 cups after cutting)
2. Potato (2 medium)
3. Green Bell Pepper (1 medium, optional)
4. Ginger (2 cloves, crushed)
5. Oregano (1.5 tbsp)
6. Olive oil (2 tsp)
7. Salt, pepper

Method:

Wash and cut the radish, bell pepper (missing in the pic...whoops!) and the potatoes. They should be the same size

 Mix the oil, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper

 Mix all the ingredients and bake at 455F until the vegetables are crispy (i think it took 30-35min for me)

Before cooking, we tasted the radish raw and it had a very mild flavor as compared to its other white relative. Apparently the leafy portion of the vegetable is also edible (of course we came to know later on :) ).

After baking the potatoes and the radish went well together and the bell pepper too.

Happy cooking!