Imagine a garden. In it are Black Spanish, Burpee, Champion, Cherry Queen, China Rose, Early Scarlet Globe, Easter Egg, French Breakfast, Fuego, Icicle, Plum Purple, Snow Belle, Tama— all radishes. The best way to eat all of them, to savor their isothiocyanate heat, to luxuriate in their woody density, is with butter and salt. The silken texture of the butter plays off the radishes’ crunch, and the two take a honeymoon together, visiting the sultry destinations of spiciness and cream. Fleur de sel is the key. Its moistness helps its crystals ride out the voyage long enough for the radish and butter to make their cquaintance in your mouth. It also lends mineral richness and texture to both. Fleur de sel, a pat of butter, and a radish— a poem penned by summer.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 4
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
If the greens on your radishes are pretty, leave them on; if not, trim off the greens. If your radishes aren’t completely dry, the butter will not cling to them. Arrange the radishes on a plate. Put the butter on the plate or in a small crock and the fleur de sel in a small pile on the plate or in a small dish.
Step 2
To eat, spread a thin film of butter on a radish, sprinkle with fleur de sel, and insert into your mouth.
Salted Butter: The Other Processed Food
Step 3
Possibly the best way to experience the pleasures of artisan salt is to use it on the simplest of foods. Make toast, butter your toast, sprinkle with a pinch of fleur de sel, and bite. A shimmer of salt, a wave of butter, a harvest of grain, and your mouth is alive. Which brings me to my point:
Step 4
Never, ever, ever buy salted butter. Ever. Why sully your butter with the refined industrial salt invisibly blended into butter when instead you could bless each bite with a kiss of fleur de sel and ascend to paradise?
Step 5
Of course, never, ever, ever is a long time. If you go to France and have a chance to buy beurre salé, a lovingly crafted butter typically using cream from grass-pastured cattle in Normandy combined with top-notch fleur de sel from south of Brittany, do so. Beurre salé is to mass-produced salted butter what fresh sushi is to frozen fishsticks. If you are like me, you will just grab a baguette, find a park bench, and sit there, watching the lovers stroll by and making sweet, sweet romance with your butter and bread.
