More And More Of Our Diet Is Coming From Our Garden!

With our garden beginning to produce a few early vegetables, I've been able to get a little bit creative in the kitchen with some home-grown ingredients.

Yesterday, I harvested a bunch of radishes, some lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, and a couple of red onions; and, along with a few store-bought ingredients, I was able to whip up a pretty yummy dinner!

Yummy Radish Greens

Original Image

---

---

I started off with the radish tops. I normally would have thrown these things away, but I've recently learned that they are edible. So, I searched around and found a recipe that I wanted to try. Radish greens are a bit prickly, so their texture is suitable for fresh eating, but there are ways to prepare them where the little trichomes aren't noticeable. I decided to go with...

Original Image

I took my radish greens and shoved them in a blender with some fresh elephant garlic cloves that I harvested from the back yard, some olive oil, some almond slivers, salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon juice. Then, I used the pulse function of the blender to chop everything down to the right consistency. It was a bit tedious. I had to keep stirring and re packing everything down so that the unchopped bits would get down to the blades. Perhaps a food processor would have worked better, but I didn't have one of those.

I thought that the final product was pretty tasty on its own, but I had a recipe in mind that I wanted to use it for. I was in the Dollar Tree store the other day, and I found something interesting. In their freezer section, they actually have frozen pieces of salmon! For a buck!! So, with my expectations low, I picked up a couple of pieces and decided to give them a try; however, I figured they'd need to be dressed up a bit. That is where my radish top pesto comes in!

I cooked my salmon in my newly restored cast iron skillet. Now, many people think that cast iron is completely nonstick. Not the case. While they are very close to nonstick when seasoned correctly, some foods like fried eggs and fish are a challenge for cast iron. While my skillet has passed the egg test with flying colors, the salmon did try to stick a little bit but not that badly. Overall, I would say that the skillet turned out awesome!

Next, I melted some cream cheese with a bit of milk and mixed in some pesto to make a creamy pesto sauce.

Meanwhile, I cooked up some bacon being sure that it was a bit on the crispy side. When it was finished, I used some of the bacon grease wilt my mixture of kale, lettuce, and Swiss chard greens.

Finally, I plated the meal. The salmon went on the plate with a healthy smothering of the creamy pesto sauce. Then cooked my sliced red onions for a couple of minutes and placed them on top of the salmon and pesto sauce. I put the greens on the plate and crumbled a bit of bacon over them. Not gonna lie: it looked pretty yummy!

I have to say, the pesto sauce was pretty good, but the salmon wasn't the greatest quality. What do you expect for a buck, though? It wasn't bad for a weeknight meal for the family; however, if I were trying to impress - say a romantic valentines day meal for my wife or something - I would probably opt for a better quality cut of salmon.

The wilted greens were pretty good, too. The Swiss chard apparently has a bit of a grassy flavor according to my wife, but by cooking down a little bit, the grass taste went away. I don't know. I guess I like the taste of grass. I could eat the stuff raw.

All in all, I think it was a dinner success. I will definitely be making more of the pesto, and this recipe is a keeper.