Cucumber and radish salad

Radishes are bitter, you say? Indeed, on their own they can be. That bitterness can bring a blessing when combined with other ingredients that are mild and benefit from a stronger companion. One of such ingredients is cucumber. Garlic, red onion, mint or radish render a supporting arm to the slender cucumber in popular salads.

When I was a child, the radishes were more of a late spring and early summer vegetable. Further into the summer they developed a bitter taste that no one enjoyed. The weather or the varieties of those days somehow were not suitable to grow a young second crop. Now one can find the young radishes at the market almost throughout the year.

On a hot day cucumber is an additional source of hydration thanks to its high water content.

Breathing in the smell of freshly cut cucumber and eating a cold cucumber soup or salad refreshes like a gust of cool mist bursting from nozzles onto sweating customers in a terrace restaurant on a piazza in Italy in the August heat.

Cucumber and radish salad

Ingredients for 2-3

1 long salad cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced

1 bunch of ca. 10 radishes, cleaned and thinly sliced

a few sprigs of fresh dill, chopped

(optional: young dill flowers)

Sauce

1 tsp honey

1tbsp (Dijon) mustard

1 tbsp apple vinegar

3-4 tbsp rape seed oil

salt

freshly ground black pepper

Place the cucumber and radish slices into a bowl.

For the sauce  mix all ingredients together until a thicker sauce is formed.

Mix the vegetables and dill with the sauce. 

Leave to marinate in a fridge for 5-10 minutes.

Or serve separately as I have done here.

You may also like:

Roasted radishes

Cucumber and melon soup

Cucumber salads and chilled soup
Chilled cucumber and strawberry soup

Mushroom and blue cheese crostinis

A true Italian Mamma will probably call my way of making bruschettas a blasphemy, but since I don´t own a brustolina, I am not going to go without serving these crispy slices of bread with simple toppings of tomato and basil or more special goat cheese and pears. 

Brustolina, a grill pan for grilling slices of bread for bruschettas, would be another gadget in the kitchen that would claim space that is already at limit of scarcity and fortunately it is impossible to get one here.  Clear that a gas top would bless even a slice of bread with that special taste created by real fire but you can´t always have everything. At the end it is just food. 

So an oven will do or a toaster in a breakfast hurry. The result is jolly crispy anyway. 

Let me call them crostinis then - grilled or toasted bread with a topping.

Mushroom and Gorgonzola crostinis

Ingredients for ca. 10:

Base:

1 baguette bread or other bread, sliced

olive oil

garlic

Topping:

2 tbsp olive oil

200g champignons or other mushrooms, sliced 

white part of 1 leek, thinly sliced

50g blue cheese like gorgonzola

black pepper

dill

Place the bread slices that have been sprinkled with a few drops of olive oil and spread with a clove of garlic on a baking tray and bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius until slightly brown and crispy. Alternatively toast the slices of bread in the toaster. For the extra taste spread a little olive oil and garlic on the bread after toasting. 

Heat 2 table spoons of olive oil in a pan, cook the sliced leek in the oil for 5 minutes, then add mushrooms and cook another 5 minutes. Take off the heat and let cool for a couple of minutes.

Transfer the slightly cooked mushrooms and leek into a food processor bowl and crush them into a rough paste. Add the blue cheese and black pepper and mix everything into a smooth paste. Taste, if a little extra salt is required.

Serve on grilled or toasted bread. Tastes especially good with dill.