table talk / By Simona Carini

Root roast — Earthy summer eats from the oven — with radishes?

(July 19, 2007)  What foods do Americans miss when they are abroad? I never asked anybody, not even my husband. The only person whose food longings I can relate is Mark Twain. I recently read his autobiographical book, A Tramp Abroad , written in 1879 while on an extended stay in Europe. It includes a scathing assessment of the cuisine offered by European hotels:

The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane dead-level of “fair-to-middling.” There is nothing to ACCENT it.

photo by Simona Carini

GALLERY >

After negative reviews of pretty much everything he has eaten during his stay, Twain sees the light at the end of the tunnel, since he is getting ready to travel back home, where he is planning to eat:

*Radishes. Baked apples, with cream.Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.American coffee, with real cream…*

He goes on to mention about 80 more American foods from buckwheat cakes to squash pie. On first reading, the list made me think about the menu of a Baroque banquet, but what amazed me most was the first item: Can one really miss radishes so badly?

Mark Twain and his nostalgia came to mind during my next visit to the Farmers’ Market. In his honor, I chose a cheerful bunch of radishes. I find them quite attractive: piquant underground cherries that, just like that fruit, are prone to be eaten serially. From reading Twain’s outpour you would think radishes are impossible to find in Europe, but at least in Italy they have been known since ancient times. They are one of the raw vegetables traditionally served in pinzimonio , that is, with a dipping sauce made of olive oil, pepper and lemon juice or vinegar.

After putting the bunch of radishes in my bag, I decided to use them in my next rendition of a favorite recipe that I found in an old magazine and adapted to my taste. The beauty of this recipe is that it leaves room for experimenting with various combinations of items collected under the umbrella definition of root vegetables: beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, etc. Although the original recipe did not include radishes, I felt entitled to add them to that day’s version. Choosing different ingredients in different proportions gives the dish a different personality each time. When I make it, my husband invariably comments that eating it brings him back to his roots, a place not otherwise specified. Root vegetables taste definitely substantial and earthy. Most of them, radishes included, are also quite generous, considering that both the above- and the below-ground portion are edible.

I would have never thought of including radishes in a variation of the dish had I not just read a recipe for roasted radishes in one of the culinary blogs of which I have become a frequent visitor ( Kalyn’s Kitchen ). Roasting radishes was a novel option for me, who had always thought raw radishes were the thing to root for.

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