Celery Root Magic

Tasty soup from a celery root

We love cooking with the seasons. It lets us have a huge variety of food during the year and feel good about indulging ourselves intensely during brief veggie seasons (Ah those ramps! Ah those peas! Ah those tomatoes!).

In Wisconsin, the late fall and early winter vegetables last quite a bit longer. These are the keepers - the long storage vegetables that sustain us into January and, for a few, into February: cabbages, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, onions, beets, onions, garlic. The darkest days of winter are filled with these intensely earthy and intensely sustaining vegetables. I love them for their taste and I love them because they are so abundant locally.

The newest at our table, thanks to our CSA farmers, is celery root or celeriac. It is often a huge and ungainly looking beast of a root. But that flavor! It has a bright and spring-like celery taste that can substitute for celery in recipes or, better yet, shine out on its own. Peeling off the thick skin reveals a creamy, crunchy interior that begs you to make a soup or puree.

Here is one tasty way we have made this root.

Celery Root Soup
 - from Faye Levy's International Vegetable Cookbook (Warner Books, 1993)

This eastern European soup can be adjusted to reflect the weight of your celery root!

3/4# celery root, peeled, quartered and sliced 1/8" thick
3/4# boiling potatoes, peeled, quartered and sliced  14" thick
1 T oil or butter
1 medium onion chopped
2 c. chicken stock or 2 cups water w/ veggie bouillon
Salt and pepper to taste
1.5 c. milk (whole or 2%)

Saute the onion in fat over medium low heat until soft.  Add liquid and celery root, bring to a boil, cover and cook five minutes. Add potatoes and seasoning to taste. Cover and cook 25 minutes or until veggies are soft. Puree with an immersion blender. Add the milk off the heat. To reheat, microwave. Serve with crusty warm bread or a lefse round or two.

Makes 4 cups of soup.

P.S. If you want to add some additional substance, add some cooked wild rice and sauteed leeks to the soup. Heavenly!

Solstice Lefse Madness

Holiday baking and cooking traditions are often ones that are specific to cultures and ethnic groups. Growing up in Green Bay, we had alot of Belgian, German, Polish foods that showed up around the Christmas holidays that we learned to make. When I joined my husband's family, Swiss delicacies were introduced. Other traditions have been shared by and learned from friends.

The equipment - borrowed from Lloyd's mom

Our newest foray into foods from another tradition is lefse. I am a huge potato fan and so lefse has long called my name. This Norwegian flatbread is most easily made with specialized equipment (a grooved rolling pin, flat griddle and turning stick) - none of which we actually owned. Although we had made this delicacy once or twice with Lloyd's family, it has been decades since we did this. We often promised ourselves we would give it a try.

the results

A local community education class this fall got us going. Two Norwegian-American sisters took 17 of us eager lefse-makers-to-be under their wing. The sisters had peeled, boiled, riced and incorporated cream and butter into the potatoes the night before. We added flour by the cupful and used our hands to fold it in until we achieved a firm, non-sticky consistency. During the rest of the class, we all had plenty of opportunities to hone our rolling and griddling skills. And each of us proudly took home the results - twelve soft, goldeny rounds that last a week in the fridge or can be frozen. They are eaten plain, with butter, with sugar and in place of tortillas. Oh and the family recipe. I mean, really, what's not to love?

Madison lefse crew

When my friend Lynne saw our Facebooked class excitement, she extended an invite to join a band of friends and family who have long gathered (decades!) annually in Madison to crank out a leviathan's share of lefse. 40# of potatoes, four griddles, three rolling stations, one lesfe-ball-maker and seven makers worked five hours to crank out 194 lefse rounds.

Lynne mixing the lefse dough

It was mad fun! Flour everywhere, who could roll the thinnest round, disasters at the rolling station (if there isn't enough flour, that dough loves to stick and rip as you lift it off;  a cloth up in flames but quickly doused), strategizing how to improve the process next year (another annual tradition) and stowing lefse rounds under card table-sized cloths after baking to keep them soft. Much laughter and talk. Oh and moo shu pork lefses for lunch!

Working with this crew helped me feel confident about our own solstice lefse making planned the next day with Lloyd and me. We made 5# of potatoes and got about 50 smallish rounds. Enough to share with our families and set a few aside for our own lefse love. We think next year we should use two griddles.

I think we have another annual holiday tradition!

How I Run My Kitchen Good

Well, not really *my* kitchen.

This lifehacker post does have great tips (and links) to techniques that help you make the most of your time in the kitchen.

If you, like me, have learned a ton by watching cooking shows or internet videos but want more, more, more, stop by the post and get chef-y!

Michael Pollan on PBS

I have been influenced by many writers on food, Michael Pollan among them. His thoughtful research, writing and consideration of food has been both enlightening and somehow reassuring (or alarming depending on your eating habits). His oft-quoted mantra,  "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." encapsulates much of what he is getting at in his writing.

Food52 blog just posted about an upcoming movie Pollan is doing: In Defense of Food. It will be shown on PBS on Wednesday Dec 30 at 9:00 pm (check local listings for your local time).

It should be thought-provoking!

Gotta Cook!

Whenever we are gone for four or five days, we are wild to start baking/stewing/souping/braising - and just plain making - again in the kitchen. Even if we have been staying places with kitchens so we can make some real food, we still come home raring to go.

I suppose part of this urge stems from how bare we leave our fridge when we head out. When we get home from a trip, the home made food "cupboard" is pretty bare. We are loath to grab something out at a restaurant. Didn't we just do that off and on for the past few days?

Today found us mad for making!

Lloyd with his fresh baked bread

Lloyd made his rustic whole wheat bread - a welcome all day project. A loaf for his mom, a loaf for a neighbor and two loaves for us to enjoy over the next few weeks.

And if you have fresh warm bread, what is better than soup? I got busy making a Scotch Oatmeal Soup - leeks, carrots, celeriac, a jar of our canned tomatoes, cabbage and a half cup of steel cut oats. It's hearty and tangy and perfect accompaniment for crusty bread! The recipe is from Dana Jacobi's 12 Best Foods Cookbook.

With the leftover celeriac from the soup, we made the Celery Root and Hash Brown Cake from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy and paired it with some tasty leftover turkey and gravy for the family Thanksgiving yesterday.  We did like the celery pop but the greasiness of the hashbrowns - not so much!

Finally we had some pork shanks we wanted to braise today to use in another dish tomorrow. We find that the rich broth from the slow braised pork pairs perfectly with the winter root vegetable (leeks, fennel and cabbage) braise we make often. That recipe comes from Fine Cooking Magazine No. 18 from Dec 96/Jan 97. It's killer!

So that's our day of delectable makings.

Do ever feel that "gotta cook" urge after time away from the kitchen?

Late Fall Eating

We all enjoy the robust summer growing season that brings us a ton of fresh fruits and veggies throughout May-October. It's simple to make meals with the bounty.

Late fall and into winter are more challenging. But in many ways we find the food more interesting.

Many years ago, Steve Keune, offered a year round CSA. Lloyd and I thought it was the perfect time to challenge ourselves to eat with the seasons as much as possible. We had to be uber inventive as the winter closed in with all the root and "keeper" veggies. They took a starring role in our cooking.

We discovered it was easier than we expected to enjoy the vegetables we had available in late fall and early winter. And we got a little hooked on those humble roots in our eating. We have found ourselves in fall or winter CSA's ever since.

Harmony Valley CSA will be providing veggies through January for us this year. Squash, rutabagas, potatoes, onions, beets, brussel sprouts, cabbage, turnips, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, winter radish, sweet potatoes - these all become the stars of braises, stews, mashes, veggie roasts, soups and salads. We buy salad greens at the co-op. This year we are thinking about making sprouts to keep fresh healthy greens at our fingertips too.

Let me share a favorite recipe that lets rutabagas shine out. It's inspired by a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone : Turnip or Rutabaga Puree with Leeks

Rutabaga/Potato Mash

• 2 small buttery potatoes (russet,  yukon gold, kennebac, yellow finn), peeled & chopped
• 1 medium rutabaga, peeled and chopped to about half the size of the potato chunks
• 1 medium leek, white parts only chopped
• splash of buttermilk 
• 1-2 T butter, depending on your taste
• S & P

Add water to cover veggies, some salt and simmer, partially covered 15-20 minutes or until tender. Drain the liquid. Mash the veggies with butter and buttermilk until smooth. Eat 'em up!

Cold weather coming? We are ready!

I Killed It!!!

Like many of you we have been making our own yogurt for years.

Our former CSA farmer on the eastern side of the state, Steve Keune, had shared a starter culture of mjölk or as it is more commonly known filmjölk about fifteen years ago. This creamy, slightly tangy yogurt-like dairy product is about the easiest way to make yogurt in the universe.

It cultures right on the counter! Add milk to a few tablespoons of the last batch, place it in a corner of the counter, unrefrigerated, and 24 hours later, you have a new batch. No heat, no timing, just yogurt. To keep it going it needs to be cultured weekly. We learned to make a pint of fresh mjolk weekly - enough to make a smoothie and use some for topping soups, stews and etc. We easily handled that amount and kept it fresh.

I shared my batches with plenty of friends and relatives over the years and, up until two weeks ago, only lost it once before in 2008. Steve provided me with another starter but I knew I better be ready in the future just in case it happened again. I couldn't keep depending on Steve now that I'm across state.

Around March, I noticed my culture getting weaker - a little more watery and a little less firm. I used whole milk and every couple of months half and half to boost its fat content to see if that would work. It was hanging in. I had some heavy cream for a recipe and thought, "I'm going to make a batch with that!" and see if I can add some muscle to the mjölk. The next morning, I found a completely broken yogurt. One sniff told me the tale. I killed it! A sniff of the cream told me why. It had turned and I hadn't noticed.

Filmjölk culturing on our old family highchair

Luckily, I had done my homework and checked the internet. There are a number of sites that sell starter cultures. I ordered two. When it arrived, we mixed the culture in a pint of fresh milk and put our baby by the specified 70-77F spot (a little tough during WI fall-towards-winter) near the pilot light on our gas fireplace. The instructions said it would culture within 12-48 hours.

We waited anxiously.

12 hours - still milk!

24 hours - still milk! (gulp)

36 hours - mjölk!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're back in business again. Today we had a delicious smoothie and started our weekly culturing again. Tomorrow morning, our fresh baby will be waiting  again!