The wonderful celeriac

I was looking at my food pictures and decided it was time to do some catch up. Celeriac is out of season now, unfortunately. But the fall is coming, and with it the goodness of root vegetables.

Jasna introduced me to this strange root. Her family would make celeriac salad as fllows: Boil celeriac root, peel it, cut into small cubes, mix with dressing made of lemon, oil, and heaps of garlic. Let is stand in the fridge for about a day or so, and then eat. Extremely tasty, highly recommended.

That was the only use of celeriac that we have known of. As much as I liked it, peeling the cooked celeriac was a bit messy, and it was kind of hard to find. so we made it only occasionally. What a giant mistake that was!

Cooking experimentation became more of a norm for us, and I got into a habit of calling on my pal Google to help me explore what one can do with certain ingredients. We also discovered Milk Pail market in Mountain View, which carries all sorts of great things in addition to their sinful collection of cheeses. They seem to be a reliable source of celeriac!

Here are two ways to prepare celeriac. First, we will peel it. The simplest way is to make a cut at the top where the leaves/stalks grow, and create a flat surface. The flat surface will keep the root stable on your cutting board while you use your large knife to cut off the skin. You can't really peel it too thin. It seems wasteful, but the surface is not smooth enough for that. The same peeling technique works great for other things such as squash, though for butternut squash there is no substitute for a vegetable peeler.

Peel our celeriac root

Now we have our root peeled, looking white and great. One easy way to consume it is to eat it raw. We were surprised how tasty it was, so this is now our favorite way to eat celeriac. We grade it with the food processor, and mix it with our favorite dressing, and when we have the time we let it stand for 1/2 hour or so, so that the root strands soak up the dressing. Leaving it in your fridge overnight works great too.

Our standard dressing consists of the spectacular pumpkin seed oil from my uncle's farm, salt, and lemon. That is it. Here is the result.

Celeriac salad

If you want to cook celeriac, you can sautee it. First cut it into small cubes - if you have two flat surfaces, you can cut the root into slices, then stack the slices and cut them across:

Then cut it cross-wise, and the cubes will appear. Alternatively, attack one slice at a time. It will be slower but therapeutic.

Heat up your favorite pan, use your favorite oil or butter, and at a medium heat saute the root, stirring periodically. Here I sauteed it with some onion and garlic, and I also added some cut up king oyster mushrooms. Season with salt early in the cooing phase - the salt will help draw the water from the veggies and will aid caramelization. The dish is done when you decide it is done, and before the vegetables are burned. You can cover the pan if you wish. This will speed up the cooking process, but will yield a different texture because the lid will trap the water in the pan. Let me repeat - do not crank up the heat way up, medium to medium-high heat is what you want here.

I made this for breakfast along with some scrambled eggs. You can use it as a side dish for almost anything, or mix it with quinoa or buckwheat groats, or pasta.