You know spring has arrived when there are 7 different street festivals swarming the streets of your one city, all within one Saturday. When your local park is carpeted in pink pedals of the cherry trees after several days of showers. When you look down and notice you’ve gotten a bit of a sunburn after just 2 hours of tennis. When the first farmer’s markets kick off. And when, there, you stumble upon beautiful bunches of radishes.
The weather is here. The flowers are here. And my favorite – the first smell of fresh-cut grass, a perfume I walked by literally an hour ago, has arrived and bestowed me with this evening’s biggest smile.
There are few vegetables I find more stunning than radishes. And they feel rather novel too. Rarely do I eat a radish outside of springtime.
When they are in season though, and just picked from the ground – still young, small, not fully matured – little else can beat how refreshing that crispness of theirs brings to the table. A spring rain rooted radish, yes please.
Along with all those seasonal festivals I mentioned earlier comes the arrival of countless picnic-themed holidays, on their way shortly. Next up is Mother’s Day, soon after followed by Memorial Day, and so on, and so on, and so on.
How to prepare for those occasions? Have a radish-inspired recipe you can count on. One that literally takes barely any effort at all to pull together.
When you have quality ingredients, you only need a few ingredients to make a dish that’s memorable.
Fresh radishes. Ripe avocados. Crusty bread. Good olive oil. Coarse salt.
All favorited ingredients of my repertoire.
Pull them all together, and you create this, a recipe perfect for any picnic, potluck, or simple outdoor, light-lunch occasion. (Don’t get me wrong, you can certainly enjoy this indoors as well. But in my dreams, I’m eating outside for all 3 meals of the day.)
Sorry (but not sorry) for the photo overload. Like short and sweet recipes that can be easily fantastic when quality ingredients are involved, beautiful photos always come easier with ingredients that inherently shine.
Fun fact – most of the spice (and flavor) of a radish lays in its skin. Early season ones should be pretty tame, but later on, if you can’t handle the heat, you can always give them a zebra-striped peel.
A little bit of that heat though, and the corresponding crispness, goes great with creamy avocados, so make sure to hang on to some of it. Enjoy guys!
Ingredients
- -1 baguette, sliced 1/8-inch thick
- -2 ripe avocadoes
- -3/4 large lime
- -1/4 tsp. cumin
- -1/2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to sprinkle on bread
- -Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle
- -7 medium radishes, thinly sliced
- -Fresh ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven 400F. Place baguette sliced in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake 5 minutes, or until tops are brown and crispy. Remove from oven.
- In a medium bowl, mash avocados with lime and cumin. Stir in 1/2 tsp. kosher salt. Divide avocado among baguettes. Top with thinly sliced radishes. Serve.
2 Comments
dishing up the dirt
May 7, 2014 at 11:21 amI love the combination of radishes and avocado. I make a similar snack with roasted polenta rounds. Next time I’m breaking out the bread! Lovely snack!
Allison @ Clean Wellness
May 10, 2014 at 6:18 pmAvocado toast is the best food ever and radishes would be the perfect crisp accompaniment. I need this in my life immediately! It would make a great appetizer! Yum!