Nikki Duffy
LATIN NAME
Apium graveolens var. rapaceum
ALSO KNOWN AS
Celery root
SEASONALITY
October–March
MORE RECIPES
Cheddar, apple and celeriac salad; Roots and fruits salad with rapeseed dressing; Field mushroom and celeriac pie; Pear and celeriac stuffing; Pan-roasted oysters with celeriac and thyme; Pot-roasted mallard with celeriac and watercress; Snipe with swede and bacon; Venison salad with apple, celeriac and hazelnuts; Bacon and celeriac tart
The subtle, savoury and completely unique smell of celeriac is right up there with leeks and bay leaves when it comes to comforting kitchen aromas, evocative of cold weather cooking and steamy kitchens on crisp, frosty mornings. Celeriac is at its best from November through to January and if you don’t soup it, roast it, curry it, mash it or slice it raw into a salad at least a few times during those months, you’re missing a trick.
Celeriac is closely related to crisp, crunchy celery, which explains why it is sometimes known as celery root. Indeed, they share a common ancestor – smallage. While delightfully named, this wild plant is harshly flavoured, having, as one fifteenth-century writer put it, a bitter and ‘ungrateful’ flavour. Ungrateful is certainly not an appropriate word to describe celeriac, however: mild, nutty and amenable is more like it. What celeriac shares with its relatives are phthalides: compounds that have been shown to have a unique flavour-enhancing ability. In short, it tastes great, and it makes everything else taste great too.
So, while it may look like the vegetable equivalent of the back end of a bus, and it may fox the cook with its fiendishly knobbly, corrugated, dirt-trapping exterior, celeriac is a superb ingredient to pop on your chopping board in winter. Set to with your sharpest knife, whittling away that rough and root-riddled rind. Eventually you will expose a glimmering white globe of creamy beauty that offers more culinary options than, dare I say, even the potato can muster.
You can’t, for instance, eat a potato raw. At least, not happily. But there are a hundred delicious uses for raw celeriac, before you even get it as far as a saucepan or a roasting dish. The most famous is celeriac rémoulade, for which you need only julienne your raw celeriac (speedily if you have a mandoline slicer), then mix it with well-seasoned, mustard-spiked mayonnaise. The key is not to swamp it with too much dressing, so use judiciously – you can always add more – and cut the richness with a spoonful of yoghurt or crème fraîche, or a splash of vinegar.
You can take the same basic idea in many different directions. Swap the mayo for a good, mustardy vinaigrette (3 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil, 2 tsp cider vinegar, ½ tsp English mustard, salt and pepper), add a heap of herbs – chopped parsley is particularly good – and you have a little salad that will accompany anything from cold ham to oysters, crumbled Cheddar or flaked mackerel, with aplomb.
To either of these dressed raw celeriac salads, you can add other ingredients. Fruit is always a winning partner: try raisins or slivers of dried apricot, crisp slices of apple or pear, or juicy segments of orange. Celeriac loves leaves – peppery rocket or watercress, bitter chicory or crisp Cos are the best – and it laps up salty flavours, whether little black olives or capers, scraps of crisp bacon or nuggets of blue cheese. Raw fennel, celery and carrot work a treat in the mix too.
A particular favourite of mine is roughly equal quantities of celeriac and raw apple, both coarsely grated and dressed with olive or rapeseed oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then finished with a scattering of capers and some crumbled Cheddar. I put a bowl of it in the fridge, where the root and the fruit slowly wilt and relax – it lasts a few days if it’s lucky.
When cooked, celeriac has a superb flavour, smooth texture and an incredibly accommodating nature: it can be mild and understated, or big and bold, as you prefer. It works well as a mash, combined roughly 50:50 with potato, which always seems to highlight celeriac’s gentle earthiness. As celeriac cooks a little more quickly, either add it in chunks to a pan of potatoes once they’re already boiling, or cook the two vegetables separately. Drain and leave to steam-dry, then mash them together, with a good measure of butter, salt and pepper. You will create a mash that is no bland backdrop, but a sumptuous side dish for any – and I mean literally any – meat or fish. You can ditch the potato and stick to a pure, buttery celeriac purée if you prefer. It’s all good.
Celeriac and potato are excellent sliced and combined in a creamy gratin too – just follow a good dauphinoise recipe, replacing up to 50 per cent of the potato with celeriac.
When cut into chunky cubes, celeriac roasts beautifully. Try roasting it in goose fat with thyme and lots of salt and pepper, or in rapeseed oil with a generous sprinkling of curry spices; in either case, the celeriac is good with potatoes, as well as other roots such as parsnip, or on its own.
If you have a sunny bit of garden with rich, moisture-retaining soil, you should be able to grow celeriac with no problems. Start the seedlings off in modules, then plant out in May for harvest in the autumn. You can leave mature roots in the ground over the winter and lift them as you need them.
Alternatively, shop for heavy but not-too-big celeriacs (1kg max), as larger ones can have a slightly spongy centre. Keep them in the fridge and they’ll last at least a fortnight. If the green stems are still attached, trim them off and use in stocks, to which they impart a celery-like note. The trimmings from the outside of the root, if cleaned of all dirt, can go into stocks too.
These delicious little soufflés are light, yet full of flavour. Free from flour, they are great if you’re avoiding wheat. You can use any good, strongly flavoured cheese that you have to hand. Serve as a starter or as a side to chargrilled steak. Makes 8
500g celeriac
A large knob of butter, plus extra for greasing
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tsp thyme leaves
200ml veg stock
50g well-flavoured hard cheese, or blue cheese, grated or finely chopped
4 medium eggs, separated
Sea salt and black pepper
Peel the celeriac and cut into 1–2cm pieces. Set a large saucepan over a medium heat and add the butter. When it is bubbling, add the celeriac, onion, garlic, thyme and some salt and pepper. Cook, stirring regularly, for 10 minutes or until the vegetables are starting to soften and smell fragrant.
Add the stock, bring to a simmer and put a lid on the pan. Cook for about 15 minutes, by which time the celeriac should be really tender and giving.
Use a slotted spoon to scoop about half the celeriac and onion out of the pan into a bowl and set aside. Tip the remaining contents of the pan (including all the liquid) into a jug blender and purée (or do this in the pan with a stick blender). Fold the whole chunks of celeriac back into the purée.
Let the mixture cool a little, while you preheat the oven to 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6 and butter 8 ramekins (about 175ml capacity). Put a baking tray into the oven too, to make it easy to get the ramekins in and out.
Stir the cheese and egg yolks into the warm celeriac purée. Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until they hold firm peaks. Stir 1 tbsp whisked egg white into the cheesy celeriac mixture to loosen it, then carefully fold in the rest. Try and keep the batter as light and airy as possible, to help ensure the soufflés rise well in the oven.
Spoon the mixture into the buttered ramekins, but don’t overfill them: the mixture should come 1–2cm from the top. Transfer them to the hot baking tray and bake for 12–15 minutes until puffed up and golden brown. Serve straight away (they will soon start to sink).
