Trio of Beetroot with Honey Caramelized Almonds and Mustard Leaf

 

Radish, Smoked Butter and Flaky Sea Salt

 

 

Celeriac Remoulade with Irish Bacon

so, after making this classic dish, celeriac remoulade. i realised that 1) remoulade is a fancy word for coleslaw and 2) its pretty tasty! and after a few seconds of wiki research i realised the name stems from french cusine and that remoulade is a sauce like aioli or mayonaise. so celeriac remoulade means: celeriac with a creamy sauce, or - coleslaw, i was RIGHT. i love coleslaw so thats probably why i think this is so tasty. the simpleness of the recipe and the flavours are lovely for a sunny day lunch or a picnic, if you're lucky enough to live somewhere it isn't raining.

preparing a celeriac

i have already mentioned my love of the root vegetable Celeriac before, if you care to read about my celeriac rants you can click, here. in the post i went as far as to claim myself an expert on the subject of celeriac. with some fancy trivia on the misnomer of its nickname: 'celery root.' very exciting and VERY nerdy. im still reserving extra space in the garden for my new root friends this year while cutting back on its stalky cousin. celeriac to me is a very understated veg, and everytime i peel, slice, or grate one im reminded this. what shows itself as an angry knobbly root in the garden is actually a subltle and friendly vegetable in the kitchen. sweet! this post is in a way a fairwell to a good friend, as this celeriac is the last celeriac from the garden this year, until october when the next crop will be ready. i've got the seed packets ready!

Wheat Berry Risotto with Beetroot and Blue cheese

this time of year is always busy down in the bakery where i work, and this week the orders are flooding in for christmas. so updating the blog has been put on the back burner. sad, but true. i am always thinking about new recipes, though. i've tried out a few ideas, some good, some not so good. i'm looking forward to a whole queue of posts i'm lining up like: pumpkin fudge, lemon geranium custard (my new favourite dessert!), and more on our knobbly giant friend - celeriac. so stay tuned in after christmas!

im revisiting one of my favourite ingredients in this recipe: beetroot. earlier this autumn i dedicated 3 posts to the bold vegetables, if you missed the posts you can read them here, here, and here. has anyone tried the beetroot gin and tonic? they're perfect for christmas parties, and festively coloured!beetroot are really the only things left out in the garden, with some rainbow chard, kale and a handful of broccolli plants. there's quite a few spots opening up and i've begun thinking about the spring whats going where. once christmas passes i'll dive more into it, and post the 2013 garden layout.

Celeriac and Apple Soup

whatta veg!

introducing a whopper of a veg, the super knobbly scary looking, the mighty mighty big, with an even bigger creamy flavour: Celeriac! it looked so nondescript in the veg patch all year, but after diggin one up the truth was revealed - a frankenstien monster of roots! what a beaut

celeriac is also called: turnip-rooted celery, 'knob' celery (ha ha!) or the wrongly named 'celery root'. thanks to wikipedia, i am now the celeriac quiz master and can say celeriac its wrongly called celery 'root' because, when we eat celeriac we are eating the hypocotyl of the plant, not its roots. what's the hypocotyl you ask? well, i can tell you a hypocotyl is the stem from a germinating seed, if you look closely the roots are actually growing from the hypocotyl, which are cut off before cooking. if you are interested in hypocotyls and what they have to offer click, here.  .

i'm pretty sure this is the first time i've cooked celeriac (i don't know why) let alone grow the bugger. bar one time possibly roasting it? and what a fool i've been to not have tried this veg in the kitchen more often. growing it proved to be slightly tricky, as the slugs burrowed into half of them and literally ate them from the inside out. eeek! i'll be giving this root veg more space in the patch next year and possibly less to its stalky cousin, gasp! i love celery stalks (see this post) but i grew way to much. 9 plants in total.