Creamy Heart Soup

I actually found Big Hearty Radishes in real life for this recipe! It's a ProSpecieRara find, an organization here in Switzerland promoting rare fruit and vegetable species. And everything they offer up is good...!

Outside of CH (that's the shorthand for Switzerland, btw - Confederatio Helvetia), my best guess is to look for heirloom varieties at Farmer's Markets. Or just add a heck of a lot of small, regular radishes to make up the difference. :)

I saw that other people have already made recipes for this soup. Some of them look really cool, like the dragonfruit based ones (standing in for voltfruit). But I can't imagine they'd taste very good at all. :(

So my soup is almost entirely roasted radishes, with beets for colour (optional! Already pinkish without!), with radish green dumplings to garnish. It doesn't reflect the ingredient list of the in-game recipe (apart from the radishes, which feature heavily!), but I don't mind. I really wanted to make this recipe as soon as I saw it: roasted radishes are absolutely delicious!!!

Creamy Heart Soup

In Game recipe:

• Hydromelon
• Voltfruit
• Hearty Radish (or Big Hearty Radish)
• Fresh Milk

My version:

• 2 Big Hearty Radishes (mine are heirloom violet radishes)
• 1 bunch of regular radishes, with greens (or bump this up to 3 bunches if you can't find the big 'uns!)... set aside the smallest for roasting whole (garnish), and if you have big radishes, cut rounds and punch out / cut out heart shapes (roast, garnish). If you have spinach to add to the reserved radish greens, all the better (I didn't). Green food colouring optional (I used some), but colour fades with cooking anyway (spinach probably a better bet!).
• 1 small beet (or in my case, some cooked cubed beets and juice from a package)
• a clove or two of garlic
• Cream (or milk)
• Salt and Pepper
• Dumplings: greens from radishes (and spinach if you have it), butter, water, breadcrumbs, green food colouring (opt., and spinach probably provides enough colour), 1 beaten egg
• Optional: white bread heart-shaped toasts (garnish), if you don't cut the large rounds of the big hearty radish to use.

Violet giant radishes (Big Hearty Radish!), with regular radishes

Look at the pattern! These were going to be PERFECT! Alas, I drank too much Naughty Lon Lon Milk, and they got accidentally pureed with the others... :(

They looked nice during roasting, too. I just forgot to pull them out..

Luckily for me, I had a back-up plan. :)

Isn't it always the way? You actually have a heart-shaped cookie cutter to use (2, in fact!), but one's too big...

And the other too small! :(

Fortunately, hearts aren't hard to do free-hand with a knife. :)

Method:

Set aside 2 small, whole radishes per serving bowl. And if you are using large slices of the Big Hearty Radish as the heart-shaped garnish, cut those and add them to the serving bowl. (Mine had a mishap - they were pureed. I blame the Naughty Lon Lon Milk I had just guzzled! Don't drink and cook!). Roast these whole, and chop the rest. I sprinkled with salt and drizzled with sunflower oil before roasting about 20 minutes at 230 C / 450 F (with convection fan), tossing and turning 3 times (every 6 to 7 minutes).

Meanwhile, I sauteed the chopped radish greens (stems, leaves and all) in a little butter and added water a few tablespoons full at a time. Chop them finer than I did, is my advice. Mince! Once they were soft and the stems no longer went 'crunch', I removed from heat and stirred in 3 tablespoons full of dried breadcrumbs, which absorbed the moisture. I let that cool completely before the next step (adding beaten egg... it'll scramble if it's still hot!).

Once the radishes et al. are completely softened through, I pureed them with water (as much as could fit in the processor on top of the veg). DON'T FORGET TO PULL OUT THE WHOLE RADISHES FOR GARNISH, PLUS THE HEART-SHAPED SLICES! My heart shaped slices met their doom in the processor. Damn.

Then I further simmered the pureed roasted veggies on the stove with about 1 litre of water (in total) - we will add cream afterwards (let the veg cook a bit longer).

In the meantime, I finished the dumplings. I added a beaten egg, and discovering that my mixture was too wet, I added an additional 1.5 tbsp of fine dry breadcrumbs and let them bind. With wet hands, I made small, radish-sized dumplings, which I gently dropped into a pan of salted boiling water. I let those gently simmer for just under 5 minutes, while I finished the soup.

I then blenderized the soup and stirred in the cream (about 250mL) and seasoned (admittedly heavily) with salt and pepper.

It was Barbie pink. Hideous.

Then I served the soup. It tasted alright, actually pretty good. The colour was hard to get past, though.

Not my favourite recipe so far - the colour is really jarring, and I think this soup needs help professionally - it tasted okay, but a bit cloying. Or was that just the colour? Hard to say.

Overall score: 4/10 for me. Argh.

I hope this helps you to come up with something better! Here are some things I learned:

• There wasn't much point in adding green food colouring to the dumplings, as it fades dramatically when you boil them. If you can find a spinach dumpling recipe and modify it, that might be better!!!
• Don't forget to take out your radish hearts before pureeing the roasted vegetables. Sigh. What might have been!
• The white bread heart gets soggy
• I found the colour overwhelming. I can see why others stuck to "dessert soup" recipes. Creamy Heart Pudding sounds much nicer! :)
• A little beetroot goes a LONG way, both colour-wise and in terms of flavour. The roasted radish flavour is subtle and mild (and tasty!), and the beet is strong, earthy (i.e. tastes eerily like dirt!) and overpowering. So tread lightly!
• I don't like pink soup. It's unappetizing! :p

I wish you well on your related culinary challenge! Please share your findings for the betterment of Zelda fandom! :)