Rooting for radishes - Telegraph The French do it, so it must be right, but I never entirely get the thing of serving raw radishes with butter and salt at the beginning of a meal. Every summer I try. On paper, it sounds idyllic: the crisp radishes, the rich butter, a chilly glass of wine. But as the butter slides off the watery roots, I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be better on some bread. They are cheap in nutrition terms, too, at about a calorie apiece. Yet a mere quarter of British households buy radishes, as against 92 per cent for tomatoes and 69 per cent for peppers. What's more, radish-buyers tend to be older than average, meaning that in a generation or two our taste for these crunchy globes could die out. How many are sold will depend greatly on the weather. On sunny days radish sales can double or even quadruple because, says Tokelove, we still basically see them as a salad-bowl ingredient. The ones we rush to buy most of all in the heat are the bunched variety, but Tokelove isn't a fan. The leaves have a very 'limited use', she says, and 'most people end up putting them in the compost'. They do look adorable, though, like an illustration from Peter Rabbit. My feeling is that, in a salad, radishes work better as a kind of honorary herb than as a main player. They are great enliveners of other vegetables, both for their colour and their bite. Radish is elegant scattered, in paper-thin slices, over a soft green lettuce salad; or tumbled with cumin seeds, spring onions and olive oil into a Middle Eastern carrot salad. They are also a surprising and good addition to a cheese sandwich. What most of us seldom, if ever, do is cook with a radish. Food reps are always telling us to use whichever ingredient they happen to represent in surprising ways. It is usually just a desperate attempt to get us to eat more of it. When Tokelove told me her favourite way to eat radishes was steamed with salt and butter, I felt dubious. Then I tried it and was converted. I took equal quantities of sliced carrots and quartered radishes (with the green end bits left on). After steaming them for five minutes, I sprinkled with Maldon salt, a large knob of butter and lemon juice. The radishes turned sunset-pink in the heat. Bathed in buttery juices, their flavour became much gentler. This is how to eat radishes with butter, I thought.