Last week, I walked you through making your own fresh ricotta. Today, I’m going to share another recipe on how to enjoy that fresh ricotta. This Radish, Edamame, Ricotta and Greens Sandwich is vegetarian and a mix of flavors textures like the soft creamy ricotta and firm edamame and grassy microgreens, crunchy slighly spicy radish and acid of quick pickled red onions. This is my take when I saw the recipe of Summer Pea and Radish Pita in the Vegetarian Times and was inspired to make a version that’s more me and less pea.
The original recipe made 6 sandwiches, and there was not an easy way to reduce the amount for quick pickling the onions (and you use the leftover liquid to help make vinaigrette), so I followed that portion exactly. So, you will have a bunch of leftover quick pickled onion to enjoy as you will. I only needed to make 2 sandwiches for my household of 2, so you’ll notice I give instructions in the ingredients and directions below for what is needed per each sandwich.
Rather than making a sandwich, you can totally eat this as a salad as well and ignore the bread (I used regular sandwich bread here and not pita). My version also uses microgreens and edamame, which I used instead of pea shoots and peas as called by the original recipe, though the idea of pea shoots and peas in a sandwich is pretty lovely too.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
- 3/4 cup of diced onions
- 1 cup shelled edamame (you can also use peas instead)
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- 6 cups microgreens or pea shoots or you can use torn butter lettuce, your call (you will use about a cup of greens per sandwich)
- About 2 cups of thinly sliced radishes (you will use 1/3 cup per sandwich)
- Your choice of sandwich bread – I used multigrain
- 1 cup of fresh ricotta (especially if you make it yourself, like in my recipe here for homemade ricotta)
- Directions:
- First, place the diced onions in a heat proof bowl. Let me interrupt this step for a second to plug one of my favorite kitchen tools besides my silicon spatulas for scraping every bit of food in containers, KitchenArt ButterMate for measuring and cutting butter with no mess, and my rice cooker. My #4 fave kitchen tool is the Vidalia Onion Chop Wizard. I bought it a couple years ago when after (wearing glasses, not contacts) chopping a large beautiful onion I had procured from the Portland Farmers Market, I noticed at work the next day that the misty morning was continuing in that it was looking a little misty inside my work cubicle looking at my monitor. An emergency appointment that evening at the eye doctor yielded that I had somehow burned my eye with possibly onion vapors and needed steroid eye drops for the rest of the week. Shortly after that I bought this Chop Wizard and now I can get onions diced in less than a minute and there are never any tears. It even measures how many cups of onions I have so I only need to chop what I need. Some people like the repetitive ritual of chopping, but not me – and this chopper helps me get if over faster with all sorts of vegetables, not just onions. It’s awesome.
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Anyway, in a small saucepan bring to a boil a combination of the 1/4 cup water, the 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, and 1 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to a boil.Β Once it is boiling, remove the liquid from heat and pour over your diced onions. Let the onions pickle for about 15 minutes before separating the onions out. Don’t toss the onion vinegar liquid – you’ll be using that as a vinaigrette later! This is a great trick for quick pickling onions for any of your sandwich needs.
- If you use frozen edamame like I did, you should defrost them by steaming, boiling, or because of the summer heatwave I just used the microwave. They only need to be heated for a few minutes, and then blanched for the same number of minutes (I refreshed mine in water with ice). Drain the edamame from the water and set aside.
- Whisk 3 tablespoons of the leftover onion vinegar liquid that was left in a mixing bowl with the olive 3 tablespoons of olive oil. That’s enough dressing for 6 sandwiches, but I only needed to make 2 sandwiches so I eyed only a small amount to keep in the bowl and refrigerated the rest for future sandwiches and salads.
- In a mixing bowl I combined that small amount of onion vinaigrette (approximately two tablespoons) with a small amount of the quick pickled onions (probably two tablespoons, one for each sandwich again) as well as 2 cups of microgreens, a tablespon of the shelled edamame, and 1/3 cup of sliced radishes and tossed them all together so everything was coated with the vinaigrette.
- For each sandwich, I first spread the fresh ricotta (about 1 tablespoon for each sandwich half), and then topped each half with 1/2 a cup of the greens edamame radish mixture.
I left my sandwiches open-faced because that’s my thing right now, to let the insides of a sandwich be visually enjoyed. I also am a bit greedy and may overstuff my sandwich.
The next day, instead of sandwiches I added more torn butter lettuce to fill it out (I added a bit more of the leftover vinaigrette to compensate) and had this whole thing in salad form instead of sandwich (and my homemade ricotta had gotten more firm, so was perfect for adding in little 1/4 teaspoon fulls instead of spreading on bread).
What’s one of your favorite go to summer sandwiches during the hot summer? What are your favorite kitchen tools/tricks?
Pech!!! This looks absolutely amazing. I am a huge fan of making my own ricotta! This seems like a much more refined use of the ricotta compared, to say, eating it straight from the bowl π
I always make a lot of ricotta because I know there will be many spoonfuls that disappear even before I finish draining the ricotta
Definitely bookmarking this one… It’s looks delicious and so pretty too! Thanks!
I just found out about zucchini humus. It’s really great on sandwiches… or just straight from the bowl like Meredith’s ricotta. π
(Oops. I meant hummus. Zucchini *humus* would be odd on a sandwich.)
I was wondering that I had never heard of zucchini hummus and how would that work… π
Oh my gosh this looks divine. The spicy radish with creamy ricotta combo sounds heavenly!
It really is – I sometimes make sandwiches with just radish and butter and am happy, something creamy to go with the spicy is a great match
That looks really interesting… might have to give it a try. π
What a lovely sandwich! I wish I had this recipe a couple summers ago when my husband went crazy planting radishes in our garden boxes. We had so many, and I knew so few things to do with radishes, that ended up composting most of them. What a waste!
I hope if radishes ever return to your home and you have extra, you’ll let me know: I like spicy food and can just eat radishes with a lil bit of butter and be happy. Though maybe it’s better if I don’t know in order to not eat too much butter…
Look at those beautiful colors. I love the elegant simplicity of this dish!
Thanks! I like how this is simple but it was really fun with the flavors and textures
Man… this is probably the most gorgeous sandwich I’ve ever seen! Simply stunning. These would be lovely on crostinis at a spring or summer party!
Thanks Jenni, I agree that these look so good that I kept them as an open sandwich, and topping smaller crostinis would be great with these as well!