Rico's new crop

Rico says the Anne Raver article in The New York Times is about a microcrop he could get into farming:

Our horseradish roots looked so innocent when they arrived in the mail last spring. Just little brown sticks, about eight inches long and as narrow as pencils. But, last weekend, when we harvested the year-old roots of one plant, they were on the atomic side of hot. “I can feel it burning all the way down,” my boyfriend, Rock, croaked, reaching into the fridge for his Gatorade. (The Rock gets heartburn from eating an orange.) “Now it’s a hot spot at the bottom of my stomach.”
My sinuses were clear for the first time in months. I couldn’t wait to mix huge dollops of this stuff with chili sauce to eat with steamed shrimp, or straight with rare roast beef.
And guess what? This root, when ground, produces isothiocyanates, chemical compounds that are studied for their anti-cancer properties.
“It would take about a tablespoon, on your steak, to give you that little anti-cancer shot,” said Mark E. Uchanski, an assistant professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, who did his doctoral thesis at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on horseradish.
Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) is in the brassica family, which includes turnips, kale, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, daikon radish, and many other plants with varying degrees of pungency and a similar taste. Native to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia, it is an ancient herb.
“The Oracle at Delphi told Apollo that the radish was worth its weight in lead, the beet its weight in silver, and the horseradish its weight in gold,” Arthur O. Tucker and Thomas DeBaggio wrote in The Big Book of Herbs (Interweave Press, 2000), my bible for growing everything from hot peppers to patchouli.
The Romans carried horseradish to Europe as a medicinal herb and as a flavoring. It was cultivated in Egypt before the exodus of the Hebrew slaves around 1500 B.C., and is often the symbolic bitter herb at the Passover Seder. By the 16th century, the pungent root was spreading throughout England. The Herbal or General History of Plants, by John Gerard, first published in 1597, describes its many uses, including as an aphrodisiac, a treatment for tuberculosis, a mustard plaster, and a dewormer. Pliny the Elder wrote about horseradish in his Natural History, an epic work of 37 volumes completed in A.D. 77, in which he observed that it healed sores, mange, and ulcers.
The common name, according to Mr. Tucker and Mr. DeBaggio, probably evolved from the German meerrettich, which means sea-radish (the plant grows wild in coastal areas), which was misunderstood by the English, who associated “meer” with “mahre,” an old horse.
Anyway, here’s what Rock and I have learned so far by growing this amazing root. Last April, Rock prepared the bed carefully, digging in plenty of compost and wood ash about a foot deep into the soil. Wood ash is rich in potassium and helps bring up the pH of our acidic soil to a more neutral 7, which is ideal for horseradish. (Horseradish will tolerate a pH range of 6 to 8, according to Johnny’s Selected Seeds, our mail-order supplier.) If you don’t have wood ash, you could use greensand, which is also rich in potassium, or lime.
After preparing the soil, Rock made a furrow with his hoe about six inches deep, and laid the root cuttings about 18 inches apart on a 45-degree slant in the soil. When they arrive from a supplier, cuttings have a thick, flat end that signifies the top of the mother root and a narrow end, cut on a slant, that indicates the bottom of the root. So if you set the thicker, flat end pointing up, you are mimicking the position of the original root.
Cover the root with about three inches of soil, pat it down, and water well. That’s about it, except for keeping the weeds out and watering if it doesn’t rain. Rock mulched with clean straw to keep the weeds down and the moisture in.
By midsummer, those little sticks produced tall, broad leaves, shooting up in a rosette from the crown. They reminded me of dock weed, only much more ornamental. Earlier, around mid-May, the plant had produced an array of tall stems with tiny white flowers, which were kind of a bonus. The root, after all, is the prize.
We waited a year before harvesting, as the experts advise, which meant an early spring dig. The trick is digging the root before it leafs out, so as not to lose any pungency to top growth.
Roots dug in the fall, after the first hard frost, are said to be the most flavorful. So we’ll dig some then too, and compare the taste. Meanwhile, we have plenty of side roots from the big one we dug up, which we will give to friends for planting or plant ourselves in new beds.
As the old saying goes, if you plant horseradish, make sure you never want to move it. Even the smallest piece of root left in the ground can re-sprout and form another hefty plant. Some people extend the bed into a border of handsome green leaves on one side of their herb or vegetable garden.
Whatever you do, don’t plant horseradish next to some polite plant that will be quickly muscled out of existence. Keep this ebullient root at a distance, like bamboo. And give it plenty of sun.
As for the harvest, we discovered how deep the root was and how easy it was to snap off with a spade. Rock got about ten inches of the thick central root before it broke; he had to dig out the rest of it in pieces. We washed the soil off, peeled the pieces and cut them into chunks. (We also cut the slender side shoots from the main root and stored them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator, to plant later or give away.)
Tradition calls for grinding the root outside, because the chemical reaction triggered creates a gas that not only makes you weep, but can irritate lungs and nostrils. “It’s a defense mechanism for the plant if it’s wounded,” said Jennifer Schultz Nelson, a horticulture educator at the University of Illinois extension service in Decatur.
Undisturbed, the root doesn’t have a strong smell or flavor. But crushing or grinding it produces isothiocyanates, a kind of mustard oil, Ms. Schultz Nelson said, which is what gives horseradish its flavor and heat.
Adding vinegar stops the reaction because it’s an acid, Professor Uchanski said. “It also stabilizes the isothiocyanates, so you can still get that flavor a week later,” he said.
Ms. Schultz Nelson said her Polish-American father, Bill Schultz, makes horseradish every spring from roots in his garden in Burr Ridge, Illinois. “He’s never allowed to make it inside,” she said. To stop the chemical activity, he adds white vinegar. “Don’t wait too long,” she said. "It will get too bitter and turn a nasty brown.”
Ms. Schultz Nelson should know. About sixty percent of the world’s horseradish is produced in Illinois. Collinsville, near St. Louis, has proclaimed itself the horseradish capital of the world.
Back in Maryland, the Land of Pleasant Living, I carried my ancient food processor out to the deck and stood upwind as I pushed the button. Fumes shot out the top in a plume that made my nostrils flare. I backed off, more excited than repelled, and watched the chunks turn into snowy fluff that reminded me of chopped coconut. Only this snow wasn’t sweet and oily and good for cake. Scholar that he is, Rock divided our ground-up root into three little bowls. The first sat for one minute before we stirred in the vinegar, the second sat for three minutes, the third for six. Then we gave them the taste test. To tell the truth, we didn’t notice much difference. But it’s the best horseradish we’ve ever had.
Ms. Nelson’s family can’t eat Polish sausage, or beef, without horseradish. It is also delicious mixed with mashed potatoes. And some people mix a bit into vanilla ice cream. Which makes me wonder what a teaspoon, or even a tablespoon, might do for Grandmother’s coconut cake.

Rico says fuck it, he'll buy it in the store...