As with most vegetables, celeriac can be sautéed (cut into small cubes) over a lively heat, or roasted in the oven, tossed in olive oil. To make celeriac chips, parboil thick batons of celeriac (just 2–3 minutes will do the trick), drain well and then deep-fry, or shallow-fry, or toss with oil and roast in a hot oven for 10–15 minutes.
I adore a celeriac and potato dauphinoise, rich and creamy. For this one, I usually blanch the slices of celeriac and potato in boiling salted water for a couple of minutes, before layering and baking slowly in the oven until heavenly soft and tender.
Raw celeriac is rather good too. I don’t like it grated – a bit slushy – but I do like it cut into juliennes (thin batons), which increases the prep time, but is worth the bother. Remember to toss it with lemon or lime juice as you cut it, to prevent excessive browning. Although there is no reason why it shouldn’t be added to any number of salads, the classic is always going to be céleri rémoulade, for which I give a recipe overleaf. Frankly, you just can’t beat it.
SEE ALSO CELERY (PAGE 124).
Roast chicken with apple, celeriac and hazelnut stuffing
Celeriac makes a good basis for a stuffing, a strong enough flavour to come through without fighting the taste of the chicken. The celeriac ‘chips’ around the outside semi-simmer and semi-roast as the bird cooks, absorbing some of the juices from the chicken for extra flavour.
Serves 4
1 plump and happy free-range chicken a little olive oil
1/2 celeriac, peeled and cut into ‘chips’ salt and pepper
Stuffing
1/2 celeriac, peeled and finely diced
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
30g (1oz) butter
8 sage leaves, chopped
1 eating apple, cored and diced small
40g (11/2 oz) shelled, skinned hazelnuts, roasted and chopped
80g (scant 3oz) soft white breadcrumbs
1 egg, lightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.
To make the stuffing, begin by sautéing the celeriac, onion and garlic together in the butter until tender – take plenty of time over this, say 10 minutes or more, so that their flavours really get a chance to develop. Stir in the sage leaves and cook for a further 30 seconds or so. Now mix the vegetables and buttery juices with the apple, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, seasoning (be generous with it) and enough beaten egg to bind.
Fill the cavity of the chicken with the stuffing. You’ll probably have more than you need, so pack the remainder into a shallow ovenproof dish and bake alongside the bird until browned and hot – it won’t taste as good as the stuffing inside the bird, but it gets the crisp crust as a bonus.
Place the stuffed bird in a roasting tin or shallow ovenproof dish and smear a little olive oil over its skin. Season generously with salt and pepper. Pour a small glass of water around the bird and surround with the celeriac chips. Roast for about 11/4 hours, basting the bird occasionally with its own juices (add a little more water if it needs it) and turning the celeriac chips occasionally – they should soften and catch a little brown here and there.
Test to make sure that the chicken is cooked by plunging a skewer into the thickest part of the thigh – if the juices run clear then it is done. If they run pink and bloody, then get the whole lot back into the oven for another 15 minutes and then try again.
Let the chicken rest in a warm place for 20 minutes before serving.
Céleri rémoulade
Whenever we’re in France we head straight for the charcuterie to buy garlic sausage and a tub of céleri rémoulade. In this instance ‘céleri’ is short for ‘céleri-rave’, in other words, celeriac. ‘Rémoulade’ indicates that it is tossed in a mustardy mayonnaise, to transform it into one of France’s favourite salad dishes. Few French domestic cooks ever make their own – why bother when the shop-bought céleri rémoulade is so good? Outside France it is another matter – especially if you make your own mayonnaise, which takes no time at all in a processor or liquidiser. The celeriac itself is best cut by hand, rather than grated, which inevitably produces an over-fine mushy salad. Soften it to agreeable floppiness by soaking in lemon juice and salt for a while.
Either serve your céleri rémoulade as one amongst a bevy of salads, or make it a first course, perhaps accompanied by some lightly cooked large prawns, or thin slices of salty Parma ham.
Serves 6
1 small celeriac
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons single cream
3 tablespoons home-made mayonnaise
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
salt and cayenne pepper
Peel the celeriac, removing all those knobbly twisty bits at the base. Now cut the celeriac in half, then cut each half into thin slices – you’re aiming roughly at about 3–5mm (1/8–1/4 in) thick, no more. Cut each slice into long, thin strips. Toss the celeriac with the lemon juice as you cut, to prevent browning, then once all done, season with salt and cover with clingfilm. Set aside for half an hour or so to soften.
Drain off any liquid, then toss the celeriac strips with the cream, mayo, mustard, salt and cayenne. Taste and adjust seasoning, then serve.
Speedy mayonnaise
I’ve given up on making mayonnaise the proper, old-fashioned way. Nowadays, I opt for the quick liquidiser method, which yields up a mayonnaise that is every bit as good and so much less stressful.
Two brief notes. Avoid the temptation to increase the amount of olive oil. In quantity it gives an unpleasant bitterness. The second is the old familiar: as home-made mayonnaise inevitably contains raw egg, do not offer it to the very young, the old, pregnant women, invalids.
Makes roughly 250ml (9floz)
1 egg
1 tablespoon very hot (but not boiling) water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
250ml (9floz) sunflower or grapeseed oil
50 ml (2floz) extra virgin olive oil
salt
Break the egg into the goblet of the liquidiser and add the hot water. Whirr the blades to blend, then add the lemon juice and salt. Measure the oils into a jug together. With the motor running, pour the oil into the egg, in a constant stream, until it is all incorporated. By this time, the mayonnaise will be divinely thick and glossy. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Roast celeriac with Marsala
This is a repeat recipe, originally printed in my book Taste of the Times, which is now out of print. It is so good, however, that I have no qualms about including it again here. As the celeriac roasts, it absorbs some of the raisiny flavour of the Marsala (but not the alcohol, which just burns off), whilst caramelising to a golden, sticky brownness. Excellent with game, in particular.
Serves 4
1 medium-large celeriac
a little sunflower oil
a knob of butter
5 tablespoons sweet Marsala
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Cut the celeriac into 8 wedges, then trim off the skin as neatly and economically as you can. Toss the wedges in just enough oil to coat. Smear the butter thickly around an ovenproof dish, just large enough to take the celeriac wedges lying down flat (well, flattish, anyway). Lay the celeriac in the dish, season with salt and pepper and pour over the Marsala.
Roast for about 1 hour, turning the wedges and basting every now and then, until richly browned all over and very tender. You may find that you have to add a tablespoon or two of water towards the end to prevent burning.
Chervil root
The rarity of chervil root is a small tragedy. I have come across them a mere three or four times in my adult life and I regret profoundly that they are not more common, for they are nothing short of delicious. I first discovered them in a market near Orléans in France. This is their home region. However, even in France they remain bemusingly rare. This may partly be due to their appearance. They don’t look at all promising. Small, brown, dirty cones, looking for all the world like a pile of rough-hewn, old-fashioned children’s spinning tops, they don’t exactly shout ‘buy me’. It may well be that you or I have strode past them without even noticing their presence. Oh that it weren’t so. These insignificant morsels are blessed with a remarkable flavour, something like a cross between a chestnut and a parsnip, and if only you could lay your hands on them, I have no doubt that they would soon become all the rage.
Practicalities
BUYING
There’s no point angsting about freshness – just grab hold of them if you are lucky enough to find any. Ideally, they should be pleasingly firm, but personally I’d snap them up even if they were just a mite softer and wrinklier – the taste is still good, though they are harder to peel in this state.
COOKING
Give them a good scrub to remove any dirt (however much elbow grease you employ, the skin will remain unappealingly grubby-looking). The skin is edible, but not especially so. Peel the little darlings before cooking for the best results. They taste fab just simmered in salted water until tender (like a parsnip, this is not a vegetable that benefits from the al dente school of cooking), drained well and then finished with a knob of butter. Even more devastatingly divine, however, are roast chervil roots. Again peel before cooking, then roast in a little olive oil or oil and butter in the normal fashion, until tender as butter inside, lightly browned and a little chewy outside.
PARTNERS
Cooked this way, they go spectacularly well with roast beef, or a good steak. I dare say that chervil root has enormous potential and could be mashed, chipped, souped and so on. One day, maybe, I’ll get to find out, but that will just have to wait until the day I can source them regularly, and easily. Roll on that day.
Hamburg parsley
As entries go, this one will be very short. Not because Hamburg parsley doesn’t rate, but more because it has become increasingly hard to find. I don’t think I’ve seen it for sale for the best part of a decade, more’s the pity. Therefore my aim now is merely to prime you, just in case you stumble across a tray of Hamburg parsley unexpectedly. If you do, please buy some and encourage the seller/grower to spread the word.
Although it looks like a shocked parsnip, colour washed out to ghostly off-white, and is about the same size and shape, Hamburg parsley is actually nothing more unusual than a form of the commonest of herbs, parsley. They share the same Latin name, Petroselinum crispum, but the energy flows down to the root of the Hamburg variety, swelling it out to a satisfying girth. Not for nothing is it also known as parsley root. It is far less sweet than a parsnip and does have a distinct parsley zing, which is surprising at first.
COOKING
Although you could serve it as a straight vegetable, just boiled and buttered, the flavour is strong. In practice, it is more usual to add it in moderation to stews and soups, cut up into chunks. In this context, it blossoms, imparting something of its parsley scent to the whole, and absorbing other flavours to mollify its own in a most beguiling manner. If you have only one or two roots, you might prefer to boil and mash them with double or triple quantities of potato and plenty of butter to make excellent, parsley-perfumed mash to accompany some dark, rich, meaty stew.
Jerusalem artichokes
Once upon a time, many centuries ago, intrepid explorers crossed the Atlantic Ocean at great peril and discovered all sorts of miraculous things. There were potatoes and tomatoes and chocolate and gold. There were chillies to make up for a dismaying lack of black pepper. Less lauded and celebrated, however, was the discovery of the Helianthus tuberosus. It belongs to a later period of exploration and intrepidity, when the pioneering spirit of the first settlers in North America led them to the flaps of Native American tepees. This time, along with turkeys and cranberries, they also sampled the delights of one of the windiest vegetables known to man, the knobbly Jerusalem artichoke.
Not as celebrated as potatoes or tomatoes and never exported with quite the same passionate love/hate devotion, nonetheless the Jerusalem artichoke was a significant addition to the greater vegetable repertoire. It has since gone in and out of fashion and now hovers amongst the bevy of vegetables that are almost but not quite popular, but still beloved by many devotees.
I count myself amongst them. Jerusalem artichokes are delicious and special and still remarkably seasonal. This is a crop that belongs to the late autumn and winter, a root vegetable with the gorgeous natural sweetness that slow growth in the darkness of moist earth imparts. Knobbly they may be, but the texture of the cooked tuber is smooth and gently crisp, defying comparison with others.
There is, as the name suggests, a passing resemblance in flavour to globe artichokes but there is no way you could confuse the two. The Jerusalem artichoke is very much its own man. With one half of the name explained, you might then wonder why a native American vegetable has acquired a Levantine moniker. The answer is simple: corruption. Not fraudulent illegal corruption, but verbal. The Jerusalem artichoke is closely related to the sunflower and, like the sunflower, its open-faced flower follows the sun from morning to evening. The Italian for sunflower is ‘girasole’, translating literally as turning towards the sun. ‘Jerusalem’ is merely a mispronunciation of this, lending an added exoticism to a vegetable that has travelled far.
Not so exotic is its propensity to flatulence. Theories abound as to how to minimise the after-effects, but to be frank I’ve never been that bothered. Except once, when I was breastfeeding my first child. A generous helping of Jerusalem artichokes gave rise to a distinctly sleepless night, and a very cranky mother and baby. Lactating mothers apart, I would suggest that you just accept that Jerusalem artichokes will induce wind to some degree, and ignore it. The taste is too good to let a minor inconvenience put you off.
As if to make up for their inherent windiness, Jerusalem artichokes are often grown as windbreaks along the edge of a vegetable garden. They are easy and undemanding, ideal for the not-so-green-fingered gardener, reproducing silently and prolifically underground as the tall stems stretch upwards to protect less hardy plants.
Practicalities
BUYING
There are two key things to bear in mind when buying Jerusalem artichokes. The first is that they should be fairly firm with just the slightest give (i.e. not as hard as a potato, but firmer than a tomato). The second is that it is worth spending a few extra seconds sorting through the box to select the least knobbly tubers. Charming and funny though the more knobbly ones look, the fact is that you are going to have to peel the wretched things at some point. Smaller knobbles will just have to be sheared off and discarded; larger ones may ultimately go the same way if you can’t be bothered to peel each and every one of them. In other words, you pay for a lot of waste.
COOKING
The next issue is when to peel them. My mum always used to peel them after boiling – she thought it easier – but I veer the other way, preferring to peel them before they go into any pan. The first method is probably more economical in that it minimises waste, as the skin just pulls away, but it does mean that reheating will be necessary. Peeling them first means that they can be whisked straight from the pan to the table, which suits me better. Be aware, however, that peeled raw Jerusalem artichokes discolour very quickly. Within minutes they take on a rusty colour as they oxidise. To prevent this (especially if there is to be a time lapse between peeling and cooking) drop the prepared Jerusalem artichokes into a bowl of acidulated water (i.e. water with the juice of 1/2 lemon, or a tablespoon or two of vinegar, swished in).
Jerusalem artichokes can be cooked in most ways. Plainly boiled or steamed, tossed with a squeeze or two of lemon and a knob of butter, and served hot is the most obvious. But equally as good (if not better) are roast artichokes, bundled into the oven still swaddled in their skins (no choice here), with a small slick of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Once cooked it is up to each consumer to decide whether to eat the skins or not. I’ve often included Jerusalem artichokes in stir-fries (they make a rather good substitute for water chestnuts), where if you get the timings right they retain a slight crunch, alongside the characteristic sweet nuttiness. They go fantastically well with chicken in a creamy stew, even better encased in puff pastry to transform the stew into a pie.
PARTNERS
Some people like them raw in salads. I don’t. I do, on the other hand, like them lightly cooked and cooled in a tarragon or chervil-flecked dressing, to stand as a salad on their own, or to add to other ingredients. Nut oils – hazelnut or walnut – bring out the natural nutty taste of the vegetable. Prawns (or lobster if you fancy something really smart) and Jerusalem artichokes on a bed of watercress or rocket make a most appetising starter or main course in the middle of the cooler months. Grill or bake a rasher or two of pancetta or dry-cured bacon until crisp, perch it on top and you’re heading towards perfection.
SEE ALSO GLOBE ARTICHOKES (PAGE 139).
Jerusalem artichoke broth
I have fond memories of my mother making Palestine soup way, way back, in the cubbyhole of a kitchen in our holiday home in France. As a name for Jerusalem artichoke soup it now strikes one as a distinctly tasteless joke, but to be fair it pre-dates the creation of Israel in 1948. When I came to look up the soup in her Vegetable Book (Michael Joseph, 1978) it turns out to be a puréed cream of a soup, and not at all the clear broth studded with knobbles of sweet, semi-crisp artichoke that I thought I recalled. Memory plays strange tricks…
This is how I now prefer to make the soup, the intensity of slow-cooked vegetable sweetness shot through with a balancing measure of white wine vinegar. All in all, it is a deceptively simple creation, obviously at its best when simmered in a home-made stock, but still more than palatable when a decent instant vegetable bouillon is substituted.
Serves 6
1 large onion, halved and sliced
675 g (11/2 lb) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled, halved and sliced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 good sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
1 litre (13/4 pints) chicken or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons roughly chopped parsley salt and pepper
To serve (optional)
6 thick slices baguette
150g (5oz) single Gloucester, mature Cheddar or Gruyèe cheese, coarsely grated
Put the onion, artichokes and oil into a pan and add the thyme and bay leaf, tied together with string. Cover and sweat over a low heat for some 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Now add the stock, vinegar, salt and pepper (be generous with the pepper, please) and bring up to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then taste and adjust seasoning. Discard the thyme and bay leaf and serve, sprinkled with parsley.
If using the bread and cheese, toast the baguette lightly on both sides under the grill. Then, just before serving, top with grated cheese and slide back under the grill to melt. Float a slice of cheese on toast in each bowl of soup as you serve.
Chicken and Jerusalem artichoke pie
Jerusalem artichokes impart an enormous depth of flavour to any sauce or stock they are simmered in, which is what makes this otherwise fairly classic chicken pie so appetising. For a dish like this, I use a mixture of breast and leg meat, cut into large chunks. The darker flesh stays moister throughout the double cooking.
Serves 8
500g (1 lb 2 oz) puff pastry
plain flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
Filling
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
30g (1oz) butter
500g (1 lb 2 oz) Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and cut roughly into 1.5cm (5/8 in) thick chunks
finely grated zest of 1 orange
150ml (5floz) dry white wine
21/2 tablespoons plain flour
300ml (10floz) chicken stock
700g (1 lb 9oz) boned chicken, cut into 3–4cm (11/2 in) chunks
150ml (5floz) double cream
salt and pepper
Begin with the filling. Fry the onion and garlic gently in the butter until tender without browning. Now add the Jerusalem artichokes, orange zest and white wine and boil down until the wine has virtually disappeared. Sprinkle over the flour and stir for a few seconds so that it is evenly distributed. Gradually stir in the stock to make a sauce. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the chicken. Now cover and leave to simmer away quietly for some 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Then uncover and simmer for 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Stir in the cream and cook for a final 3 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon into a 1–1.5 litre (13/4-21/2 pint) pie dish and leave to cool.
