Horseradish

Here is some of our horseradish haul from last week. And our cat, Samson, who seemed fascinated by the stuff:
I'm no big horseradish fan, but I like a touch on my roast beef now and then, so I whipped up a fresh horseradish cream sauce the other day for a big roast dinner.

First I peeled and grated the horseradish root. Open the window if you ever do this - WOW it's pungent stuff! I was surprised how dry the horseradish seemed - no juice at all. It looked more like dessicated coconut then a fresh vegetable.

Then I mixed about 2 tablespoons grated horseradish with half a teaspoon each of salt, sugar and mustard, a big pinch of black pepper, a generous dash of lemon juice (most recipes use white wine vinegar but I only had a strong cheap malt vinegar, which I wasn't too sure about) and 3 or 4 tablespoons double cream. Obviously, all the quantities could be adjusted to taste.

It was delicious! My only complaint might be the texture; the horseradish gave plenty of flavour to the cream, but I didn't think much of the tough strandy bits which remained. I saw one recipe which recommended soaking the horseradish in hot water first - I wonder if this improves it - or perhaps I'll have to find a way of mincing it smaller next time...

Next task is to find a way to preserve the rest of it! Seems to me that with such a low water content, it might freeze well. Anyone have any experience of this? Otherwise it's going to end up in vinegar in jars in the fridge, I think, but I'm not sure how long it'll last there.

The roast dinner also gave us a chance to eat some more of last year's parsnips, which I keep forgetting about and really mustn't - they taste soooo good!