Occasionally you may be lucky, as I was, to find fresh horseradish roots at your local market. If you enjoy the heady aromatic flavours of wasabi or mustard then you must try fresh horseradish.

The root is rather ugly and is related to mustard, broccoli, wasabi and turnip! Don’t be put off its gnarled ugliness, the fresh flavour id delicious!

It is eaten raw in sauces and dressings and is seldom cooked. It is so easy to prepare and preserve for use in sauces, dressings and dips. It is often classified as a spice rather than a vegetable.

To prepare, store and preserve

Simply peel the root as you would a carrot, grate it on a fine grater. I buy one or two roots even though I only use 10 or 20ml at a time. The remaining grated root keeps for weeks refrigerated in a glass jar, covered with a splash of white grape vinegar.

Horseradish sauce is traditionally served with roast beef. I love it with steak or on a sandwich of rare roast beef.

When you grate the horseradish you may have some tough stringy bits. Don’t discard these, I put them in the blender to make my first batch of sauce.

To make horseradish sauce you need:

20-30ml raw grated horseradish (quantities vary according to your taste!)

30-50ml sour cream or full fat plain yoghurt

30-50ml good quality mayonnaise (I use Hellman)

1 squeeze of lemon juice or about 5ml white wine vinegar

To prepare

Combine all the ingredients. Refrigerate until required.

This sauce will keep for about 10 days refrigerated.

To serve

I failed to take a pretty picture of the sauce I made to go with last Sunday’s roast fillet, but this evening I made a delicious beetroot salad using the remaining sauce. Beetroot and Horseradish go well together and you will find many combinations of these vegetables.

I simply dressed roast, boiled beetroot and a few blueberries with the horseradish cream. I added a finger of grilled Halloumi Cheese for a delicious meatless meal.