Horseradish Source

As Carrie mentioned last week, I stumbled across a rather plentiful source of horseradish on the way to Long Buckby recently. This has always been one of my favourite plants ever since I found some growing on an abandoned and seriously overgrown allotment I rather rashly took on with a friend some 15 years ago.

I discovered this pretty simple recipe for horseradish sauce around that time and I’ve used it ever since. Unfortunately, it’s not vegan but I’ve included it anyway in the hope that there’s a decent substitute for the double cream.

Ingredients:

1oz horseradish root
1 tsp English mustard
½ tsp ground black pepper
about 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
¼ pint double cream

Grate, or finely chop, the horseradish root and whizz it in a blender with the mustard, pepper and vinegar. Once it’s mixed more or less evenly, add the cream and whizz it again. It should go pretty solid pretty much immediately but keep going until the horseradish is well mixed in.

I’m told that it keeps quite well, although I’ve never been able to leave it long enough to find out.

If you’ve got more than you need (or if some well-meaning person has given you too much…) you can plant the top part of a root and it should start to grow. It seems to propagate quite easily, in fact it can be difficult to get rid of once it’s established, so make sure it isn’t going to become a weed in the future.