Radish Top Soup

From time to time, K accuses me of being obsessed with radishes, and I'm not saying that she doesn't have a point. I do like the taste very much, but it's really more that they have a particular knack for drawing out my maternal instincts. This is entirely the result of my gardening endeavours last year, when I was trying to establish a vegetable patch in a garden so neglected that little was ever going to grow without the application of some serious compost and much pruning of the many, many shade-giving trees. With no car, I had to transport compost in a bike basket, so go figure. I planted some radish seeds and was utterly convinced that I must be a terrible gardener if I couldn't even grow radishes, so I rather got into the habit of going to check on them to make sure they were doing OK. Sometimes I would check them three or four times a day. It became a bit of a standing joke in the house. Where's Sal? Oh, she's just gone to check her radishes again.

The point of telling the world this and thereby making myself look a tad odd is to excuse the fact that I googled 'radishes' during a particularly dull moment of my current PhD chapter. On reflection, perhaps I don't need an excuse for googling random vegetables instead of working on my PhD. Either way, I am glad I did, for I discovered that it is possible to make soup out of the tops. No part of my radishes will be wasted, and in this way they shall be reassured that I love them. So, without further ado, here is my version of Radish Top Soup.

To make about 3-4 bowls-worth, you need:

- The tops of a small bed of radishes, assiduously collected over two weeks, minus those that had turned to green slime in the fridge. This is probably about equivalent to 150g.

- The last two radishes from the above-mentioned radish bed.

- 2-3 potatoes, thinly sliced

- A fairly small onion, finely chopped

- A good knob of butter

- 600ml of veg stock

- double cream (no, I didn't measure it)

- salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan and saute the onion until soft and translucent. Add the potatoes and radish tops, mix it all up and pour in the stock. Season well. This should be allowed to boil and then left to simmer for thirty minutes. Cool until it the rather unappealing looking mixture can be put in a blender, then blend well. Add enough cream to make it creamy soup, garnish with sliced radishes and serve with freshly made wholemeal bread. It tastes a bit like spinach soup would taste if spinach tasted more like radishes and less like spinach.