Grillled Vegetable Paninis with a Radish Greens Salad

Raul returns from Food Basics with a giant bag of ruby red radishes. Drew loves radishes just sliced and sauteed in butter but Raul wants to make a summer salad. While chopping the radishes he has an inspiration, "Surely there must be something we can do with the greens?" A-googling he goes. Sure enough radish greens are, according to tasteofbeirut.com, "loaded with Vitamin C, calcium, protein and cancer-protective nutrients." There is a note that the greens require a lot of cleaning and trimming. Raul discovers it to be true - there is a lot of grit and the stalks have to be removed (there is an Indian stirfry that calls for radish green stalks that will have to be tried eventually - but worth the effort of being up to his elbows in cold water for 20 minutes.  Tasteofbeirut.com also offers the recipe, reproduced here, that Raul decides is the most interesting to try. 

Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 bunches of radishes, cut off the greens and use for a salad. Keep the radishes for the next day and either saute in butter or stuff in sandwiches or eat as a snack.
• 1 cup (or more) of garbanzo beans, fully cooked.
• 1 large shallot, cut in rings (or any other type of onion)
• a handful of dried cranberries (Raul substitutes chopped dates)

Dressing:

• 2 cloves of garlic, mashed
• the juice of one lemon
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• dash of salt, pepper

After washing the radish greens and drying them, place them in a bowl along with the other ingredients; prepare the dressing, whisk well and pour one tablespoon at a time over the salad and toss. Use the leftover dressing for another salad.

Raul also adds cashews to the salad and though Drew finds the dressing a little lemony - so he adds some black pepper - the texture (slightly hairy as well as crunchy) and flavour of the radish greens is delicious, different and R&D curse all the times they wasted radish greens.  

To go with the salad Raul creates grilled vegetable paninis. He salts sliced eggplant and leaves for an hour before placing it, along with sliced red pepper and zucchini, on the bbq to grill until they are dried out, caramelized and have grill marks. He then bathes them lightly in balsamic vinegar, mixes in whole basil leaves, covers with plastic wrap and leaves them to steam until they cool. A hearty 12-grain bread and mozzarella cheese are a perfect complement and though Drew adds some Miracle Whip and a schmear of wasabi, the vegetables are full of flavour all on their own. 

"Without the cheese this would be a perfect vegan meal," notes Raul. Drew agrees but the dog shudders in horror at the concept of a meatless kitchen. "And tomorrow the radish salad!" promises Raul.