Honey-Soy-Glazed Root Vegetables

If you’ve never eaten a cooked radish then you’re missing out.  If you’ve only ever had them raw and disliked radishes and written them off, again, you’re missing out.  When a peppery & crunchy radish is cooked its flavor and texture transform into something wonderful.  Something buttery.  Something smooth.  Something yummy.  Radishes are roastable, steamable, fryable, but I would start here where they’re incorporated with other flavors so that if, for some reason, you don’t care for them- you still have other tasty vegetables to eat.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound medium turnips, cut into 3/4-inch wedges
1 pound medium radishes, quartered
½ medium sweet potato, quartered & sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 pound Swiss chard, bottoms of stems discarded and leaves chopped
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons water
Salt
6 large shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and caps quartered
1/2 pound rice crackers, pulverized

Pulverizing rice crackers. Need I say more?

Directions

  • In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the turnips and radishes, sweet potatoes and carrots and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until lightly browned and crisp-tender, 10 minutes
  • Add the honey and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the vegetables are glazed.
  • Add the soy sauce and cook until syrupy
  • Add the lemon juice and the Swiss chard; cook until the chard is wilted. Raise the heat to high and cook until all of the liquid has evaporated; keep warm.
Chopped Swiss chard & quartered shitake

  • In a medium bowl, whisk the molasses with the water and season with salt. Add the shiitake and toss to coat.
  • Drain the mushrooms, squeezing out most of the excess liquid.
  • In a separate bowl, toss the mushrooms with the rice cracker crumbs to create a crunchy coating
Shitake coated in rice crackers
  • In a large skillet, heat the remaining oil. Add the mushrooms and cook over a high heat, until golden and crisp
Crisping the shitake
  • Transfer to paper towels to blot off oil. Top the vegetables with the mushrooms and serve

We had our glazed root vegetables with some Asian pork tenderloin.  They would side well to almost any meat though, or could be eaten alone or over rice as a vegetarian dish.

Glazed root vegetables with pork tenderloin

J
Recipe adapted from an article in Food & Wine, recipe by David Chang

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