This week on Gourmet.com:
The science of the humble celery root
> Sitting there all wizened and silent on my counter, celery root resembles a great sensei, like Pat Morita, or Yoda. And like those sages, celery root has taught me important lessons about cooking and life.
Celery root seems to be one of the ingredients of the moment, so I need to move on to even less cool root vegetables, like parsley root, or, uh, bell pepper root?
Your first comment is a flame. Congratulations!
FIXED
my…”gourmet” people sure seem…snooty. (based on a vast scientific sampling of two.)
I couldn’t tell whether the second comment was a flame or not!
I’m confused… is the commenter right that there may not be a connection between celery and celery root? Uh, they’re… the same species, as far as I know, even if the plant used for celery root is a different variant? Or is the Real Truth something more sinister?
One of my favorite ingredients, celery root’s flavor is best, I think, when cooked. I’ve also roasted it with other root vegetables and grated it for latkes (tasty, but it’s tough to grate). My favorite approach (and easiest) is a coarse mash with potatoes and lots of olive oil:
http://www.culinate.com/search/q,vt=top,q=%22smashed+potatoes%22/4338
I also make a variation of leek and potato soup with celery root:
http://realgoodfood.com/leek_celeriac.html
And I’ve found that a simple swivel peeler does the job for all but the gnarly root end.
Jim
Wendy, I honestly have no idea what the commenter meant. Yeah, they’re two variants of the same species. It’s not like celery root is a really large buckwheat groat or something.
-Groat
now i’m sad, because i loved all three of ruth reichl’s memoirs so much, and now (in all my scorpio all-or-nothing glory) i’m inclined to believe everyone connected with “gourmet” is a…well, it rhymes with “flickweed.”
except for you. :)
Hey, don’t get me in trouble, I’m the new guy!
Celery root is the ingredient of the moment? We had it in the root cellar for years. Great winter soup. Finally, I’m culinarily cool.
How about cilantro root? I’ve been curious about those for a while.
Cam, I see cilantro with roots only occasionally in Seattle, but I’ll buy it next time I see it and play around. The only “official” use I know of is in Thai curry paste, but it seems like you must be able to do something else with it. Cilantro root puree might be awesome.
I wonder if cilantro root tastes like soap to certain folks?
Lauren, I’m sure the answer is yes, since it doesn’t taste fundamentally different from cilantro.
I live in Berlin, Germany, and picked up a celery root at the market a few weeks back. This was before I realized its trend appeal in the blogging world. I had no idea what to do with the thing, but they are so omnipresent here (as a staple vegetable, not a trend) that I felt obligated to try one. It made a great cream soup.
Ironically, my German friends are all well-acquainted with celery root, but find it completely bizarre that I eat regular stalk celery. And when I tried to explain that it goes well with peanut butter…
Thanks for the mention and reminder on parsley root. A chef friend raved about it once to us, but we have not found it yet. We let our italian parsley grow huge, waiting for the root to grow too. But it was a teeny weeny thing!
It’s probably a different variety of parsley.