"That could be anything from very good to quite terrible. It’s hard to tell.” Diane's Cookbooks
The opening quote was a given for one of my how to cook all that celery I have, for dinner tonight, because it so aptly summarised how I feel when doing a fridge raid meal. The opening picture however, was rather more difficult, as I had settled in my head for a celery and pasta dish for dinner but there seem to be no pictures of those two ingredients, before being transformed, and picking out just one of the dishes I found didn't seem right somehow.
So I resorted to paintings of celery and alighted on this one, which apart from being very pleasing, includes a leek - the other ingredient that is currently clogging up the fridge. Both of them are long and unwieldy and do not fit in the vegetable crisper, so they just lean all over the apples and oranges on the diagonal, until their length depletes and they can be put in the vegetable crisper drawer.
I could have gone for a quiche - it's Friday after all and we often have quiche on a Friday and one of David's favourites is quiche, mustard and bacon. However, it might have been the last quiche I made that made me vomit in the middle of the night, although honestly I see no reason why that should have been as all the ingredients were extremely fresh. I think I actually just had some kind of bug. Sorry, I'm waffling. All of which is to say that I decided on pasta - another Friday night favourite.
I had a feeling that celery and pasta was not a natural fit, and indeed it isn't. The Silver Spoon - the Italian classic cookbook has not a single celery and pasta recipe in all of its 1263 pages. Jamie Oliver - an Italophile if ever there was one, doesn't either, and the same for Nigella - also an Italophile. Or Rachel Roddy.
I even did a TikTok and Instagram search and although there were a couple on TikTok, they weren't either tempting or repulsive enough to warrant inclusion. Ditto for Instagram. Well there was this one from Healthy Foodsmiff, which is interesting in that it's just the pasta with the celery plus a bought sauce:
"Boil pasta. Chop celery. Stir in tablespoon of sauce. Sprinkled with a little grated vegan cheese. Done 👍🏼 I used corn pasta and smoky sauce."
That's the recipe, and it actually looks quite good, so it just goes to show that anyone can make something interesting in no time at all. There's no shame at all in buying a prepared sauce - there are many better ones around these days. Just make sure there aren't too many ingredients, or ingredients you have never heard of.
I didn't even bother to check out 'real' Italians because by now I had decided that celery as a featured ingredient in pasta is just not a thing in Italy - which is almost a bit worrying for my current predicament. I mean does that imply that it's not a food partner for celery. It's often there of course, because celery is one of the three key ingredients of soffrito - celery, onion and carrot - which is the basis of many an Italian dish, but it doesn't star. Not with pasta anyway. I guess Nigel Slater sums it up in his essay on celery in Tender volume 1 by saying:
"It has to be said that of all the vegetables I have grown, cooked with or talked about, celery is the most unpopular."
However, in spite of saying that he's 'a lifelong fan' and should start a celery appreciation society, he doesn't seem to think it goes with pasta - no recipes for such, in that book or any other that I can see. Indeed Eat has no reference to celery at all in the index. It's a bit player - or confined to salads, and soups with the occasional braise. Interestingly most of the 'experimenters' amongst the well-known cooks and chefs whose books we collect, had not experimented with celery and pasta.
Except for - yes of course - Ottolenghi, who seems to have experimented with just about everything, so I'll begin with him. He was also the only 'name' to come up with something - hence one of the first recipes I came across. He calls it Conchiglie with saffron, capers and raisins and describes it as a "vegetarian take on a Sicilian fishy spaghetti". There's no celery in the title but there are 6 sticks in the recipe so that's quite a lot. It's really the main ingredient but with all those other interesting Sicilian things - raisins, capers, saffron, olives and pine nuts. I am, of course, tempted, but is it a step too far for David? That is the question. Will think further.
As I was getting no joy with the 'experts' I just fed celery and pasta into Google, and so began a magical mystery tour, of professional, would-be professional and rank amateurs like me who blog away on a regular basis, making up things because they either like to experiment or they have a whole lot of celery to do something with. I found several and aim to include them here, more for their variety and to reward them for just being there really. So I hope you will stick with my 'tour' here.
So in the order in which they appeared, more or less - Pasta with celery from James Delmage on his website Sip and Feast. You can't get much plainer than that recipe title, and to be honest the recipe was also pretty plain. Mind you we should always remember that simple is often the way to go. He says the celery is julienned, although I would call the celery shown here as cut into slim shortish sticks. They're a bit big for julienned. But that's a mere quibble. You cook lots of sliced garlic until golden, add the celery, stir with some chilli flakes and salt. Add pasta water and lemon juice, toss with spaghetti and top with lemon zest and parsley. And you know that might work - crunchy garlic, lemon - you almost can't go wrong with lemon. Fresh. But no I think the celery should blend rather than stand out really. The ingredients mix is good though.
Number two - Stefan's Gourmet Blog - Pasta with Celery (Pasta al sedano) - another plain title for a fairly plain dish in which you braise the celery in a tomato sauce and then just mix with pasta. Sort of OK - and tomato sauces are always tasty but they do tend to dominate. I don't think you would taste the celery very much which should have been a bonus in this case because Stefan says:
"Kees usually likes all the food I cook, but in this case (as I could have expected, because I know he hates celery) he refused to eat it. But if you like celery, this is really nice."
He should have emphasised the tomato and said nothing about the celery. Kees might not have noticed.
Number three - Another man which is most unusual. His name is Dan Whalen and the website is called The Food in my Beard. The dish is called Caramelised celery linguine and is certainly a bit different. He also had a couple of interesting things to say along the way not the least of which was that the inspiration to cook celery came from an episode of Portlandia a sketch comedy show which relentlessly spoofs the hippy culture of Portland, Oregon. His first attempt, however did not go well:
"My trendy blogger style dish was to make a “stuffed” celery with the core. I took notes from stuffed artichokes and spread out the ribs, stuffing them with blue cheese. It was a total disaster and tasted awful!"
However, he persevered and is pleased with the result:
"It may seem odd to think about caramelized celery as an ingredient in linguine, let alone an ingredient for any dish, but if you love celery and want to experience it in a new direction, this is the dish for you! Imagine al dente linguine coated in a rich sauce, loaded with every dimension of flavor in celery, from the freshness of the leaves, to the bitterness of the seed, and the unexpected sweetness of the caramelized celery itself adding a burst of flavor in every bite. It’s a beautiful balance of sweet and savory that will leave you craving more.
Well full marks for marketing, and you would have to agree about the unattractiveness of caramelised celery - looks a bit like some caramelised caterpillers to me. But then caramelised is often good. It would be very different from that very fresh first recipe of the bloggers though. Mind you he uses celery juice - can you buy that? and also some diced tomatoes, which might go with the caramelisation but I don't think I'll go with this one. The pasta is cooked in the celery juice which is an interesting thought. Or not.
Number four - Celery pesto rigatoni from Sugar Salt Magic. Now this looked very tempting which is why it's here. However, I soon realised that the pesto is made from the celery leaves - something to be stored away in the brain perhaps, but it's the celery itself I wanted to use not the leaves. Maybe I should freeze the leaves as I work my way through my bunch and then eventually make the pesto - cashews are the nut of choice here by the way. There are a few recipes out there on the net that use a celery pesto. Good but not for today.
Number five - Creamy celery pasta from Herbeevore. Well somebody had to come up with cream in the mix. I even considered it myself. However, when I came to look at it more closely I saw that the creamy element was actually coconut milk, which is a no no in this house. And truth to tell it looks a bit boring. Maybe she's a vegan - hence the coconut milk. Doesn't seem right though does it?
Number six - Penne with celery sauce from A Little Bit of Soy. No soy involved however. The title of the blog comes from the fact that the author is Japanese. Well at least she does give an explanation for the title. It's amazing how many people don't explain their web titles. In fact do I? I should look, although perhaps in my case the title Rosemary's Ramblings : daily musings about food, says it all. I think that's what I was hoping. This recipe is really just celery sort of boiled with garlic, puréed with Parmesan and then just tossed through some pasta with bacon and more garlic. So no.
Number seven - Pasta Soffrito from The Wild Epicurean. Remember I mentioned that celery is most usually found in Italian food as a crucial element in soffrito? Well here the quantities are lifted a bit, all are braised together, with garlic and chilli, add wine and cherry tomatoes and dried oregano and it's done. No not quite. I forgot to mention you also add tomato juice and concentrated tomato sauce. So I think my previous comments about too much tomato and not enough celery are relevant here. Particularly as she emphasises the carrot over the celery. I'm trying to get rid of celery here remember. It's not particularly fast to make either. Looks pretty and professional, however. Maybe another time.
Number eight - yes there are lots. Pasta with leeks and celery from Another Year in Recipes - or Diane's Cookbooks as it says in the url. Diane looks to be as old as me, which rather warmed me to her, as did her husband Tom's comment which is my headline quote for this post. And leeks as well which I also have to use, although I'm not particularly bothered about using them today. Diane was also undecided about the recipe she had found, but in the end 'curiosity overcame uncertainty'. Her uncertainty came from the fact that there were just three ingredients - celery, leeks and pancetta:
"That was the crux of our uncertainty: Would those few, simple foods combine to make magic, or would they just sit next to each other alongside the pasta?"
Well it seems she was right about her uncertainty because:
"I’d have to say the dish tasted about the way it looked – pale, plain, mild, simple. ... the leeks and celery weren’t strong enough on their own to make a forceful sauce, even with the assistance of the pancetta and cheese." Another Year in Recipes
But the day was saved by her husband making the leftovers into a very tasty frittata. So nice to see somebody else doubting an actual recipe but not trusting herself to veer away from the original. And also making something of the remains that is better than the original.
Number nine - Italian Food Forever and Trevi black celery and sausage pasta. The rather suspicious looking stallholder below in, I assume Trevi, is selling what is a regional speciality with one of those IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) labels - though it looks much like the celery we get here. Maybe a bit slimmer. The author says that you can use ordinary celery and that:
"By adding in some parsley you can duplicate the darker color and more intense flavor that the black celery has."
I have to say that I am tempted by this. I like the idea of the added sausage, although if I do this I shall have to defrost some sausages in the microwave. It's too late I think for them to thaw naturally. There's a bit of cream in there as well and it does look particularly nice ...
Number ten - last one, well ten is a good number isn't it? Pasta with soft celery tomato sauce on a website called A la Damaris. I included this one, not for the recipe itself - too much tomato again, but for the rather lovely introduction:
"This is one of those pasta sauces that takes me back to when all the kids were still living at home. To a day where you looked in the fridge and thought … what kind of pasta sauce will I make today… there are some onions, garlic, a bunch of celery, tomatoes… let’s put it together let it all simmer wonderfully. Stir occasionally. Look out at the birds flying by. Stir again. Answer a question from one of the kids. Stir again. Let’s take make that phone call. And stir again. And then we can yell, guys, dinner is ready. And the happy faces when they see what’s being served. Such a sauce is this…" A la Damaris
If people take the trouble to write something that gives a glimpse into their world and you find that it has touches of your own world within, then I think it deserves a bit of recognition, even if it is from a tiny corner of the website that has just a handful, literally, of dedicated readers.
I set out to find a recipe and instead found a whole heap of websites, which I had never come across before, with things to say, with snapshots of other lives, and also with recipe ideas. Even if I do not make a particular recipe from this selection I now have a whole host of new ideas of how to tackle celery in the context of pasta. If these 'ordinary' but passionate cooks can come up with something, then why is Ottolenghi the only one to come up with something as well, because:
"when used correctly, celery makes nearly everything else better." Alex Beggs/Bon Appétit
Footnote - I'm also pondering on whether I can replace Rachel Roddy's zucchini with celery in her delicious Linguine with courgettes, egg and Parmesan? which I have mentioned a couple of times before and is now my favourite way to cook zucchini.
POSTCRIPT
And in years gone by I wonder what I was thinking of cooking - if anything - on September 13? I've just realised - today is Friday 13th. Oh dear - maybe I shouldn't experiment.
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Nothing again - maybe I ignore the 13th subconsciously whatever day it is. But no ...
2021 - Beauty to tempt you
2019 - An obscure coincidence
2018 - Canny marketing
2016 - It's raining
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