Radish

Radish: Offering a peppery, satisfying crunch with every bite, radishes have a unique place in the hearts of veggie lovers. A root from the Brassica family and a cousin to cabbage, the many shapes, sizes and colors of different radish varieties is surprising.

The average large radish is red, round with a glistening white interior and roughly the size of a ping pong or golf ball. Another type is the creamy white daikon - a true tuber with the tail to show for it, and a winter radish, while the red ones proliferate in the spring. The original radish was black. Other varieties come in pink, dark grey, purple, two-tone green and white, and yellow.

The radish is well-traveled and ancient, mentioned in historical Chinese annals as early as 2,700 B.C. Egyptians cultivated them even before building the pyramids. Greeks and Romans liked them as large as they would grow, and served them with honey and vinegar. Radish cultivation reached England, Germany, Mexico, and Puerto Rico by the 1500s. In Britain, radishes had medicinal as well as culinary uses, usually for kidney stones, bad skin, and intestinal worms. It may have worked, because the colonists brought radish seeds with them to the New World.