Radish Bruschetta and Butter Lettuce Butter Bean Boats (contains no actual butter)

Decided to knock out a staple ingredient of my recent dinners, go to the grocery store, and just think up something random. Maybe I shouldn't do this in the future. I said "no rice or tofu" and ended up cooking some delicious bruschetta, butter lettuce leaves filled with butter beans and snow peas. Everything also had radish in it because, hey, it looked delicious. And everything was delicious, but nothing seemed to pair well, my plating failed, and I didn't use any herbs or spices beyond salt. Also I totally failed at staying away from my staples by cooking bruschetta, which got me through large parts of college (like nachos, but questionably healthier).

First the bruschetta (and side salad, because a head of lettuce is a lot of lettuce for one person and I couldn't use it all making boats).

Sovrano Grana/Radish Bruschetta with Frisee, plus side salad

I'm not sure a recipe would do much good here, but my cooking directions for bruschetta might. I used a very hearty whole wheat bread with wheat bran and rolled in sunflower seeds. To properly prep it, you slice the bread about pinky-thick and brush olive oil and salt on both sides. You then put on thinly sliced topping of choise (usually tomato, here I used radish,) covered that in grated cheese (Sovrano Grano in this case), and add a few sprigs of your garnish (usually rosemary or basil, but here frisee). Cook it for 15-20-ish minutes in a 450 degree oven. About a minute or two before you think it is done, pull it out, drop a little more cheese on and one final sprig of garnish, place back in the oven and turn off the heat. Let this sit for a few minutes to melt the cheese and fix the garnish.

Butter Bean Butter Lettuce Boats

The second part of the meal was the "protein" portion, which I arrived at in the grocery store via the following observations:

• Butter lettuce is delicious.
• As are butter beans - which, if you haven't had, are like pinto beans that have been gamma-radiated and angered. Except they don't turn green.
• Snow peas are wonderful lightly cooked.
• Radish looks awesome (and I had leftovers from above becase things at the grocery store really aren't meant for one person).
• Oh hey butter lettuce makes nice little boats to put shit in.

I baked the radish for a while, and cooked the beans and some snow peas over medium-low heat for 10 minutes with the bean juice and grated cheese. Served this in butter lettuce boats, the finest ship in the leafy-green navy.

I'd say it was a good dish with flavors that paired well, but the presentation could use some work. Snow pea oars for little butter bean men with radish hats? Its a shame I only thought of it now, writing this post, or there would have been 2.718x the amount of awesomeness in this post.