Make This: Radish Salad

At the market recently, there were signs of spring atop the tables - stacks of greens, bags of tender lettuces, spring onions, green garlic, and tight bunches of freshly dug radish, all bearing peppy, healthy greens that begged to be eaten. I stuffed several into my tote and carted them home.

I love radish because it is a pedestrian vegetable, available in varying degrees of quality at any grocery store in America. But there is also something quite elegant - worldly, even - about a handful of fresh, in-season radishes. It signals seasonal eating, which, in my opinion, is the greatest luxury - available to woefully few people who have not the time nor the idea to shop seasonally at a farmer’s market.

With radishes this nice, and the greens showing such life, I think of making a simple radish salad. I ate something similar at St. John in London years ago - just radish and cheese, dressed liberally and tumbled around a bit. It accompanied a dish of pork - the fatty, chewy meat offset by a piquant, crunchy salad - a lively pairing. Fergus Henderson is famed for offal, but it’s his veggies, treated with care and understanding, that keep me coming back.

April Bloomfield, another Brit who knows her way around a vegetable, includes a similar recipe in her cookbook from the Spotted Pig days.