Radish Top Soup

Today’s arduous chore was picking lettuce and radishes. My Red Sails lettuce is getting way too big, so I picked the biggest of the heads. I’ll have to harvest the others within the next week. They look full size and beautiful, but one head at a time is enough, especially when I added the thinnings from next succession of lettuce. I like the thinnings because I also am growing Black Seeded Simpson which is a bright almost fluorescent green. It contrasts beautifully with the Red Sails. To add interest to the salads, I picked some tatsoi leaves and some mizuna.

I had been waiting to pick my radishes until a bunch of them were ready. I decided with the risk of cabbage root maggots, I would pick them today. So I picked any of them that were big enough to eat. I wanted them in a bunch, not for their root (though I’ll eat that too, I love radishes), but for their tops. I had heard of radish top soup, but had never made it before. There are a lot of different recipes for it, but they all boil down to this: in chicken broth, boil some potatoes; sauté an onion in butter; add radish tops and wilt; add to broth; cook for a bit to marry the flavors; add salt and pepper to taste; puree in a blender; add cream. The difference is all in how much of what to add and how long you cook it. I added what I had in the fridge.

Radish Top Soup

• 3 small yellow potatoes
• 4c chicken broth
• 3T butter
• 1 small Vidalla onion
• 6c radish tops
• dash of pepper and salt
• ½ c half and half

The soup was good, but not perfect. There was definitely too much onion and too few radish tops. Next time I’ll cut the onion in half and double the radish tops.