1 tablespoon butter 1/4 cup olive oil 1 large onion, chopped 1 teaspoon minced garlic 2 to 3 medium zucchini, grated Salt and freshly ground black pepper 6 eggs, separated 8 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated 1/4 cup parsley, chopped. 1. Butter four 1 1/2 -cup ramekins or one 6-cup soufflé dish. Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Put the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat; when it’s hot, add the onion and garlic and cook until soft, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the zucchini, season with salt and pepper, and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until very tender, another 10 to 12 minutes. If you prefer, substitute a 10-ounce bag of spinach, chopped and cooked the same way. Drain the vegetables if there is excess liquid, and let cool. 2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and cheese with some salt and pepper. Add the vegetables and parsley and stir. In a clean, dry bowl, beat the egg whites until they are light and fluffy and just hold soft peaks; stir about a third of the whites into the yolk mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in the remaining whites, trying not to deflate them much. 3. Pour the soufflé mixture into the ramekins or dish. Bake until golden and puffy, 30 to 35 minutes, and serve immediately. Yield: 4 servings.

Recipe: Zucchini Soufflé

IN early April, Kris Comstock, a representative for the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, conducted a seminar on bourbon at Char No. 4, a bar in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, that offers 150 kinds of American whiskey. mong the bourbons he poured were Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare and Blanton’s. But his students weren’t interested in those. “The first thing that everyone wanted to taste was the white dog,” he said. “We make products that win amazing awards all around the world, and they want to taste the white dog.” White dog, or white whiskey, is, basically, moonshine. It’s newborn whiskey, crystal-clear grain distillate, as yet unkissed by the barrel, the vessel that lends whiskey some or all of its color and much of its flavor. And white dog is currently having its day. “Aging in wood has many beautiful effects on a spirit,” said Tad Carducci, half of the cocktail consulting duo known as the Tippling Brothers. “But it does tend to disguise whatever the base spirit is. When you strip that away, you’re getting a real sense of what wheat offers, or rye or corn.” Unlike vodka, in which the source grain is often purposefully purified to a vanishing point, white dogs are pungently fragrant, with a chewy sweetness to them. This spring, Buffalo Trace began a limited commercial release of its white dog, which until now was available only as a much-coveted souvenir from the distillery’s gift shop. The bottles took their place on store shelves next to a growing line of colorless whiskeys. Most are the work of young micro-distilleries like Death’s Door, in Wisconsin; Finger Lakes Distilling, in upstate New York; Tuthilltown, in the Hudson Valley; the Copper Fox Distillery, in northern Virginia; and House Spirits, in Portland, Ore. There are so many white dogs on the market now that Joe Carroll, owner of Fette Sau, a bar and restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, offers a white-whiskey flight. Passengers on that flight, he said, include everyone from informed whiskey aficionados to inquisitive novices who think whiskey is born brown. “They’re curious because they don’t know anything about it,” he said. According to Max Watman, the author of the recently published “Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine” (Simon & Schuster), the trend is being fueled by two very differently motivated groups: practical-minded distillers and ravenously questing enthusiasts. “It’s obviously a boon to small distilleries,” Mr. Watman said. “If you’re making whiskey, you’ve got to keep the lights on and wait. It helps to be able to sell something right away. But that’s not the end of the story. I think anybody who’s ever toured a distillery and tasted this stuff coming right off the line is surprised at how delicious it is. Everybody says, ‘Wow, you should sell this!’ ” The “you should sell this” moment for Death’s Door’s founder, Brian Ellison, came in early 2008 when he was preparing to age some red-winter-wheat-based distillate. A small Chicago distributor thought the raw liquor was so good he asked for 50 cases as is, and quickly found buyers. “I always thought at some point people would get tired of it,” Mr. Ellison said. Instead, Death’s Door has sold more white whiskey in the first quarter of this year than it did in all of last year. Mr. Ellison is thinking of putting in some spring wheat to keep up with demand. “The word ‘curiosity’ is very apropos,” Mr. Carducci said. “People who are spirit geeks are always looking for the next curiosity. But what happens is they become hooked and think it’s an actually respectable spirit.” Gable Erenzo, a distiller at Tuthilltown, said that its Hudson New York Corn Whiskey — one of the earliest of the new white dogs to hit the market — has been steadily creeping up in sales, and he is not surprised. “We knew this was going to happen,” he said. “People, especially bartenders, were excited when they heard we were making a corn whiskey.” Not just bartenders, either. Even though home distilling has long been illegal in America, interest in it is rising. The Web site homedistiller.org has 5,500 members, with handles like Kentucky Shiner, upinthehills and toofless.

Moonshine Finds New Craftsmen and Enthusiasts

OF all the things you can do with a radish — slice it into salads, chop it into salsa, shred it into slaw or, better, top it with a thick layer of sweet butter and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt — the last thing I’d thought to do was cook it. But last spring I started noticing roasted radishes sprouting up on menus all over New York City. Even the fancy takeout shop near my house was offering them every now and again. Clearly, there was a reason to cook a radish, and I wanted in. So I gave it a try, roasting a bunch of halved radishes in a hot oven with plenty of butter and lemon juice. One mouthful, and I immediately got the appeal. Instead of spicy, crisp and crunchy, these radishes were sweet, succulent and mellow, vaguely like turnips but with a softer bite. I continued to cook radishes all season long, pan roasting them instead of oven roasting when the weather became too hot. I usually ate them for lunch sprinkled with feta cheese and herbs, or sometimes left them naked but for extra sea salt and cracked black pepper. Then winter came. Tender radishes vanished from the farmers’ market, and I forgot all about them, until a friend served them at a dinner party in January. They were prepared raw, slathered with an anchovy-and-garlic-laden bagna cauda sauce. The combination of garlic, anchovy, butter and tangy radish hit the exact umami notes that I always crave. So I knew that the moment radishes came back into season I’d try the same thing. At last I had the chance when they reappeared at the farmers’ market last month. While the radishes were roasting, I stirred together a quick sauce similar to bagna cauda. Then I piled the soft radishes and pungent sauce onto toasted crusty bread, crostini style. The toast sopped up the sauce, making it possible to get an even greater garlicky sauce-to-radish ratio in each bite than without the spongy cushion. It also made the radishes seem like more of a meal than my usual bowl of warm salad. Sometimes the most familiar ingredients are the ones with secret lives.

A Good Appetite: How to Roast Radishes