When I first saw the pictures of beauty heart radishes from internet, I was attracted by their dramatic colors.
Since then I had been looking for it at every grocery store or farmer's market I visited,without luck. One day, the farmer in our family told me that he had planted two types of winter radish this year. One was the typical white radish. the other one is called "XinLiMei" radish.
"Really?" I was so excited.
"Yes. You can go out and see. In the garden box, the left two rows are white radish, the right two rows are XinLiMei radish. The color and shape of their leaves are slightly different".
I went out to the vegitable garden box in the backyard in which Garlics were just harvested in July. Now the radish plants were growing flourishly. The leaves of the white radish have lighter green and are more pointed than the beauty heart radish.
After that, the first thing I did in the morning was always go out to check if the buauty heart radish break through the soil.
One day, I finally had that “Aha!” moment when I saw the green root of a radish for the first time.
Day after day, the radish root grew bigger and bigger. Their nearly rounded shape, along with their light green color looked so cute, like a bady's chubby cheek.
"How big they can grow?". "When can we pull them out? I asked these questions everyday to the farmer.
Finally, one day , the farmer said:" You can pull the bigger ones out now".
I took out my camara and said : "You pull. Let me take a picture".
A few days later, the farmer told me: "We have to pull all the radishes out. It is geting cold. I need to prepare that garden box and plant garlics for next year before it is too late". Unfortunatelly, some of them were still small in size.
The farmer told me the harvest could be better. He planted the radish seeds directly in the soil at the end of the July. But after one or two weeks, he only saw the baby plants of the white radish come out. He had to re-plant the seeds of beauty heart radish. This time, He planted the seeds in seeding pot first and then move them into the ground after the plants grow bigger.
For me, I was very happy with whatever we got. I finally had a chance t to touch, to admire and to enjoy the beauties.
From the outside, you might think that the beauty heart radish is just a smallish turnip. Its lime green shoulders and creamy white sides give no hint of the delight inside. But after I sliced one open, I was immediately falled in love with it. it has unique starbursts of vibrant fuchsia and white, surrouned by a green ring .
I am fond of any special color vegitables, for example black and orange tomatos, purple beans , purple cabbages, purple broccoli and white bitter melon, etc. But beauty hearts are extra special. Beauty hearts are harvestd in fall when there is not many other colorfull vegetables. If stored properlly, beauty hearts can be stored far into winter when they can bring some delight in the cold and dull winter.
As a lover of these unique radishes, I decided to make them the star of our dinner when my son and daughter-inlaw came over. I tried to keep their original color by making a beauty heart rasidh and chayote salad.
Ingredients:
2 large beauty heart radish
1 large chayote , peeled
4 tbsp white -wine vinegar
3 tbsp salt
1 tbsp white sugar ( optional)
Directions:
1. Wash and cut beauty heart radish into thin round slices , put them in a bowl.
2. Wash, peel and slice chayote, and put them in another bowl
3. Put rice vinegar, salt, sugar into the bowls and leave them there for at least half hour.
4. Pick some nice-looking round slices of heart radish and chayote and cut them in half, becoming half-moons which are used for making the flowers. Remove the skin of some of the heat radish half moon, which are used for making the flowers without the green picotee edges
5 Cut all the leftover slices into thin match stick sized strips
6. Arrange them on plates.
For another batch of harvest, I desided to make radish cake from heart radishes. Normally radish cake is made from white radish. I was courious how it will turn out if the radish cake was make from beauty heart radishes.
I am not a fan of radish cake serviced as Dim sum in restaurant. I made some change to suit my own taste.
.I didn't have Guangdong sausage. So I just skipped it and added some lard.
Instend of using big dried shrimps, I used some fresh shrimps, cutting into small chunks.
I did use some small dried shrimps by baking them in low temperature, grinding them into power and mixing with other ingredients.
The final prodict turned out very pretty, with the color faded some because of the cooking. And it tasted good too.
The youtube link I used as reference to make the radish cake.
https://youtu.be/B_0ufsgkL7o?si=BsW0MkQ7HeETwusd
The other day, the farmer was checking his inventory of his seeds, prepaing for next year.
I told him: " Make sure you plant heart readishes again next year and plant more".
"I will", the farmer said.
I look forward to the next season!
