HUNG LIKE A HORSERADISH: WHO KNEW SOMETHING SO DIRTY COULD BE SO GOOD?

Yep, that's a girl's best friend--the horseradish root--in all its nubby, primitive and externally misleading glory.
It's a far cry from the oft-spongey, pickled & jarred version you'll meet in the deli case. In a variation of "Even cold pizza is good," I am an addict; I will take it in a pinch and for some purposes* however, I place fresh horseradish root up there (or should I say down there?) with various other culinary mannas, nectars of the gods, blessings, boons and fabled elixirs.

In the distant past I knew a bartender who would see me coming, whip out the horseradish and immediately go out back to start coarse-grating. Returning with a lovely white mound at the bottom of a very deep glass, he'd squeeze in lemon juice, sprinkle with Old Bay (Baltimore, Hon) & enough Tabasco to sweat out A Case of You, wending around this piquant sculpture the most astounding Bloody Mary you've ever experienced. I'd like to think I was special, but I suspect I was just one in a long-line of the bar's horseradish-lovers.

Ginger and I also have this relationship--on the side of course.

I have decided to plant my own horseradish, ginger, rhubarb and garlic this year. A garden bed full of these tumescent pleasures (I will share the progress), which is why I bought this particular specimen. But it's a rapscallion of a root! Counterintuitive! I assumed I could save what appeared to be the rootball for planting, and reserve the shaft for delicious kitchen experiments. Well (I cannot believe I'm saying this, but fear it's unavoidable) I blew it. Why didn't I consult BERT first? Post-hasty-pudding research on horseradish cultivation showed me that the entire root needs to be inverted and planted--the ball-end UP and strands breaking the surface of the soil. GRRR. I might still be able to get something out of it.
No worries, my mother would say: There are always more roots in the bin.

But let me tell you what I learned from my destined-to-be-brief tryst with this individual:

• Scrub it well before you peel and work with it--it's endlessly muddy and hairy.
• Like ginger (a great wing-man for HR), it benefits from a quick freeze before cutting or grating.
• I made a steroidal Tom Yum soup, folded it into crema fresca to serve with meats (also ignoble collards, asparagus and artichokes), and grated the rest into some cider vinegar (this will keep forever, but lose the bulk of its flavor quickly).
• A live horseradish root is, um, BIG. You can't possibly use it all at once, so keep it in the fridge in plastic so it doesn't dry out, peeling up to only what you need and grating that off as you need it.
• MY NEXT CONQUEST: Perfecting a recipe for a Horseradish Souffle...I'm envisioning something light, almost popover in nature, maybe with smoked gouda. To serve with..what else? MEAT. Recipe to follow.

Oh, baseborn horseradish, why do we restrain your plenum? So senseless for you to be condemned, mutilated and jarred, then meagerly stirred into treacle which doesn't doesn't suit you at all. Skull-achingly sweet cocktail sauce, a too-mayonnaisey-to-be-useful side for a tenderloin or roast, these are a misuse. Like putting a great ass in mom-jeans and keds.

When it comes to horseradish, She cried more, more, more.

*Yes, I saw Bobby Flay use it, somehow making even the vile and inviable, seductive.