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!