Another thing we found in the bottom of the chest freezer was a block of radish-greens soup. It was labeled as such; otherwise we might never have figured out what it was. I had either cooked and then pureed the radish leaves, or pureed them raw and then cooked them, to make the soup. It was a potage, which is a pureed vegetable soup.
Here's the pureed radish-leaf soup after I thawed it in the microwave. I wonder if it didn't have potato in it.Anyway, we tasted it and it was delicious, so we didn't throw it out.
Instead of eating it as soup, I decided to make a timbale or gratin out of it by adding eggs and cheese and thenbaking it. After doing a lot of recipe-reading, it occurred to me that I could use the radish-leaf puree to make
a Jacques Pépin style faux soufflé. Here's a link to an old post about that easy method for making a soufflé.
We ate the radish-leaf soufflé with some Toulouse-style sausages that Walt cooked on the barbecue grill.And the soufflé was so good that I had another little bowl of it for supper last night.
By the way, here's what our upright freezer (un congélateur-armoire) looks like. It has four slide-out drawers andtwo compartments at the top that have drop-down doors on them. As we've mentioned, one great thing about
this freezer is that it is frost-free. It's capacity is about 8 ft³ (that's 222 liters — in France, the capacities
of things like ovens, refrigerators, freezers, and even car trunks ("boots") are given in liters).
As for eating radish leaves, here's what French radishes, called radis roses (pink radishes) in French, look like.When the green leaves aren't past their prime, they are good cooked and have a peppery taste.
You can cook them in liquid or sautée them in butter or olive oil.
Yesterday, Walt brought home a beautiful bunch of radishes from the supermarket. The leaves were pristine.I'm cooking them now. I cook them the way I would cook chard, spinach, or turnip greens, for example. Here's a link to an old post about cooking both radishes themselves and their green tops.
Do they have mustard green (my favorites) in France? I've never seen them.
ReplyDeleteThis is weird, I was just thinking of that souflé dish yesterday! Why?
I've grown mustard greens here from seeds I brought back from the U.S. They are very vulnerable to flea beetles (altises) but I had luck with the greens for a few years. I guess I should try them again. One variety of mustard that is grown everywhere around this region is colza also known as rape. Colza is edible — see this site. I think I might try growing some. I can order seeds from www.amazon.fr.
ReplyDeleteLustucru (l'eusses-tu cru) que le colza était comestible? Ça vaut la peine d'essayer.
DeleteAccording to Google, you can find mustard greens at Asian stores.
DeleteRight now we are still confined to a 10-kilometer limit, and the Asian stores in Blois and Tours are farther than that from Saint-Aignan.
DeleteWow, very interesting way to end up using the radish leaf soup. Looks yummy, but I can't imagine the taste, since I have no idea what it would taste like.
ReplyDeleteNice freezer - looks very practical.
I've only looked at amazon.com but all the upright freezers with drawers sold on that site are small models (30 ft³) that would fit under a counter. Our upright freezer is branded as Hotpoint-Ariston.
DeleteCooked radishes and radish greens taste a little like turnips and turnip greens. The flavor isn't quite as strong, in fact. I added some radish greens to a turkey-barley soup we had for lunch yesterday and that we had found it in the freezer.
DeleteAfter seeing Jacque's mother's recipe for cheese souffle I often make it that way instead of getting out more equipment to make it the way I used to!
ReplyDeleteThat is such a great freezer! The doors and drawers prevent so much cold air from ‘falling out’ when the big door is opened.
ReplyDeleteExactly. The cold is contained, as it is in a chest freezer, but there's no inaccessible bottom for UFOs to hide in.
DeleteFollowed your links and went down the rabbit hole to December 2011 when you had that big storm.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I remember the Dec. 2011 storm. I'll have to go down the rabbit hole too. I do remember the really bad windstorm we had in late Feb./early March 2010.
DeleteNice freezer! It looks very practical.
ReplyDeleteRadish greens are good in salad, with arugula, especially at this time of year when bitter greens are good for the innards -- a kind of culinary spring housecleaning.
You two could run a B&B, with an emphasis on the second B. Such beautiful/unusual dishes.
ReplyDelete