Radish Pasta

Here's another quick & easy summer time meal that's light and delicious! This recipe utilizes all the wonderful "French Breakfast Radishes" I grew in my garden this year. Makes a great lunch or light dinner. This dish also uses the radishes greens which are very good for you. If you can't find radishes with their greens attached, you can substitute a few handfuls of baby spinach.

All you need to put this together is:

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
3/4 pound of linguine or other long pasta
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 large bunch of radishes, thinly sliced, greens rinsed well and roughly chopped.

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions. Reserve 1 cup pasta water; drain pasta and return to pot. Add 2 Tablespoons butter and toss until butter is melted; keep warm.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt 1 Tablespoon butter over medium-high. Add garlic and radishes and cook, stirring occasionally, until radishes are crisp-tender, 3 minutes.

Add radish greens and cook until wilted. Season with salt and pepper.

Add to the pasta and stir to combine. Add enough of the reserved pasta water to create a light sauce that coats pasta. Now, if you'd really like to make this a meal, in that same skillet, melt another Tablespoon of butter and toss in 1 pound of peeled and deveined shrimp, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until opaque throughout, 4 minutes. Add shrimp to the pasta and toss.

To serve along with this, I sliced up a baguette into "crostini", toasted them, quickly, rubbed them with a cut clove of garlic, sprinkled some shredded smoked mozzarella cheese on them, put them back under a broiler just to melt the cheese.

Serve this along with the pasta and enjoy!