I Only Have Myself to Blame
So I have this weakness for novelty. This year, I decided I wanted “something new and different” for the Food It Yourself garden. While perusing the offerings of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds rat’s tail radishes caught my eye. For $2.50 I’ll try growing anything. And grow they did. Observe:
These things are HUGE and full of radish-flavored seed pods.
I am so impressed at how large and happy and pretty the plants are! They make the whole garden look amazing. Here is the thing, though. Mr. Food It Yourself hates radishes. I am, at best, indifferent to radishes. Why did I even bother? I have no idea. This left me with three options:
1. Rip the plants up, allowing my poor, overshadowed, cucumbers to see the light of day.
2. Pick as many pods as I can, divide them into small zippy bags and leave them in the kitchenette at work. Then, rip the plants up, allowing my poor, overshadowed, cucumbers to see the light of day.
3. Try to make the radish pods palatable. If successful, I can rip up just half the plants…you see where this is going.
Speaking of cucumbers, pickles are good. We like pickles. I am going to try fermented pickled radish pods. I found this recipe for pickling all the things from Aimée Wimbush-Bourque’s super cool blog Simple Bites.
Scald a quart jar with boiling water. Actually, scald two, just in case. Also, make sure those fermentation lids are super, super clean. Meanwhile- we harvest.
Picking the pods.
Rinse away any dust, dirt or bugs. Note the big leaves. Evidently, grape leaves will keep your pickles crisp. I will look up the reason for that and get back to you. Bonus- leaves can be used to keep the pods under the brine.
Mixing up the brine and thinking about what seasonings I want to use.
I decided on garlic, pepper corns, mustard seeds and dill seeds. Fittingly enough, I grew and harvested the dill seeds a couple years ago, then realized I season things with dill very, very infrequently. I dumped them on top of one grape leaf.
I packed the pods in the jar. I only needed one quart after all. No regrets prepping two, though.
Topped the pods with the remaining grape leaves, poured in the brine, shook out the bubbles and capped with the fermenting lid. Now those pods can spend the next few days hanging out with the pectin and pepperoncini.
I only have myself to blame for my current radish pod situation. We will see how this works out. Remember that time I tried to grow bean sprouts? That did NOT work. I will keep you updated on these pickles. Have you ever grown a “new thing” and had it turn out differently than expected? Share your tragedy and triumph in the comments section. We are not here to judge, only to empathize.
I like that your pantry is alphabetized.
Also, I DO like radishes.
So…there’s that.
The brine is JUST starting to get cloudy, it doesn’t even taste tart yet. It will be a few more days until we know if this was a good idea.
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