Celery Root

It is so simple to transform a hard, homely celery root into a lovely salad with delicate taste and texture. Just drop the big root—a softball-sized unpeeled round—into a big pot of water, and let it cook for an hour or more. This technique retains and mellows the root’s wonderful flavor, and makes it easy to peel and cut it up too. Dress this simply, or take the salad in a different direction (see variations).

This soup uses a very simple technique that is time-consuming, to be sure, but requires very little attention and rewards you with loads of rich flavor. Consider this a Sunday afternoon on the back of the stove kind of dish. Although I use carrots, celery, celery root, and one of my favorite underutilized vegetables here—parsnips—you can use any variety of root vegetables that you have on hand or that look good at the market. Just be sure to use at least a few different kinds to lend real depth of flavor to the soup. I add the vegetables toward the end of cooking to keep the flavors bright and save them from turning to mush. Any leftovers will make Monday night dinner a snap, and the soup even improves if made in advance. Be sure to cool it properly in the fridge and taste for seasoning the next day. You may want to thin it with a little additional water if it’s too thick upon reheating.

Believe me, I had never even had celery root, let alone become infatuated with it, before we started experimenting with root vegetable ganaches. But, in case you haven’t got the point by now, you can trust me on all sweet things that are delicious. I’m not trying to throw a nasty curve ball your way.

Once the snowdrops are out and the buds on the trees start breaking, I have usually had enough of mashed, roasted, and baked roots and am gasping for the fresh greens of spring. As the root season draws to a close, I find a dish of parsnips and celery root, thinly sliced and slowly baked, makes a pleasant enough change. Sweet and yielding, this is both an accompaniment and a vegetable dish in its own right. I have used the quantities below as a main dish for two before now.

Pheasant and celery get on rather well. I sometimes put thick ribs in with the aromatics for a pot-roast bird, and have included shredded celery in a salad of cold pheasant with Little Gem lettuce and walnuts. Celery root seems to be one of the most successful mashes to serve with the mildly gamey flesh of this bird (parsnip is good, too).

There is something uplifting about refreshing food eaten on a frosty day. What follows is a light, fresh-tasting salad that makes your eyes sparkle.

Fresh pork hock is not an easy piece of meat to carve. I just do the best I can, cutting the soft meat away in pieces and laying them in a shallow bowl or deep plate. Then ladle the thin, aromatic broth around it.

As much as I appreciate the traditional rendition of the sort of celery root rémoulade you might get in a Parisian brasserie, I also like to shake it up a bit. Including the ham, or even bacon, in the salad rather than serving it alongside gives the meat a while to get to know the other ingredients, becoming more than just an accompaniment. An alternative to bacon would be shreds of smoked venison or prosciutto, or maybe smoked mackerel. Radish sprouts are stunningly colored sprouted seeds with a spicy heat. Enterprising natural food shops and supermarkets have them, or you can sprout your own in a salad sprouter. If they evade you, you could use any sprouted seed here.

Crème fraîche or strained yogurt offers many of the qualities of mayonnaise but with a cleaner, more piquant character. Beating in a small amount of olive or walnut oil will nudge it toward the perfect coating consistency of a classic mayonnaise-type rémoulade dressing. Using these tart alternatives lends a lightness, too.

Many of my most pleasing suppers have been one-off, chucked-together affairs made with whatever was to hand. A question of making do. I rarely write them down, assuming that no one else will be interested in something that simply filled a hole with whatever happened to be around at the time. This was one of those meals, taken as lunch in early March when the cupboard was pretty bare, but I thought I would pass it on for its frugal, done-in-a minute quality and as yet another opportunity to do something with the celery root that turns up in the organic veg box.

Long associated with the finale of the Christmas meal, Stilton and celery is a fine combination and there is every reason to turn it into a soup. I’m not sure it matters which blue cheese you use but the saltier types tend to be more interesting here. A good Stilton will work well enough, but something with more punch—say Picos, Roquefort, Stichelton, or Cashel Blue—would get my vote, as would good old Danish Blue. Cream is usually a given with celery soup, but I am not sure you need it.

Pretty pink grapefruits add zing and color to salads. Supreming citrus fruits (see the pictures on page 97) gives you seed- and rind-free sections that are ready to eat with no fuss, and the process releases a considerable amount of juice, which you’ll use as the base of the dressing. Once you have peeled the celery root, soak it in water with a little bit of lemon juice to keep it from turning brown.

This soba gnocchi is one of the most popular dishes at my Chicago restaurant, Takashi. My customers love it and often ask me how to prepare it at home. Well, here’s the answer! The recipe is a little challenging, but I guarantee you it will more than impress the guests at your next dinner party. You can prepare the gnocchi in advance, and even freeze it (be sure to coat the gnocchi with vegetable oil before refrigerating or freezing). You can also prepare the celery root sauce ahead of time. And like the gnocchi, you can freeze it, too.

French-style potato purees are very finely processed, and often incorporate copious amounts of butter, so the resulting puree is silky smooth. In this recipe, the addition of celeriac to the potatoes creates another layer of flavor. Traditionally, in classic French cooking, white sauces use white pepper instead of black, making the finished dish appear more refined. When we were children and would see pepper in a dish we would complain, often without tasting, that it was “too hot.” Sneakily, Mama started using white pepper to pull the wool over our eyes.

Céleri rémoulade—shredded celeriac (celery root) in a mayonnaise-based dressing— is the French version of slaw. Peel a celeriac bulb with a chef’s knife, trimming away the gnarled brown skin to expose the pale flesh. Once peeled, it should be rubbed with lemon or soaked in acidulated water to prevent browning.

Celery roots are apt to be large, and with their tough skins, they look forbidding—not a good investment for the single cook, one would think. But when I discovered how roasting thick slices transformed their flavor into something wonderfully earthy and complex, it was a revelation. So now, during the winter months, I often bring home a big celery root. I’ll use about half of it for roasting, and the other half I’ll make into céléri rémoulade, that bistro standby of julienned raw celery root swathed in a mustardy mayonnaise.

Either of these flavorful, earthy root vegetables blends with potatoes to make a beautiful accompaniment to so many saucy dishes. And what could be simpler? You cook the two together and mash them with a little butter and cream, and they’re ready.

In Tuscany, every town has a market day. This is when trucks carrying all kinds of delightful edibles pull into the center of town, open up their sides, and become little grocery stores on wheels. Of course my favorite truck was always the porchetta truck—who doesn’t love a truck that sells a delicious crispy pork product? Traditionally, porchetta is a whole pig that’s been boned and cooked for hours, until the skin gets totally brown and crunchy and the meat becomes wonderfully tender. It’s most often seasoned with garlic, sage, and black pepper—and while pepper is not usually how I roll, it’s appropriate in this dish to keep the classic flavors intact. What is totally unique in my version is to cook the pork on a bed of autumn vegetables—they soak up the lovely porky juices and help create the ultimate one-pot dinner for a crowd. Be sure to save some leftovers for a sandwich the next day!