Where to start with this one...ah, I think I'll stick to a simple formula: the challenge.
The challenge was similar to those faced before, only I thought I had it beat this time. Meijer is my stand-by place for most things in this cook book, but as all of you know, Meijer occasionally falls a little short in the exotics. I truly thought I had encountered celery root there before. When I looked for it over the past few weeks, I could not find it. Finally, since Meijer did not have any pancetta, I went to Ric's a local supermarket with a hint of gourmet deli to it. While searching out the pancetta, I decided to check their produce section and found the celery root. I was grateful it's a light root vegetable without a lot of starch, it weighs less and at $2.49 a pound, every ounce matters. Not as expensive as a gallon of gas yet, but that will cause food prices to go up as well.
Next, the language barrier. The recipe called for minced gherkin or cornichon. Expecting something else fun and exotic to experiment with, I looked up cornichon. It is simply the french word for gherkin. Funny, I never learned that one in French class.
I also pride myself on making these recipes exact the first time, only I'm not perfect. (Shh...don't tell, no one else knows;-)) The dressing called for dijon mustard, which I was certain I had on hand. After I dropped the 'dijon' mustard in the red-wine vinegar, I read the bottle to find it was spicy brown mustard. I guess it really wanted to be dijon mustard today, so it is.
The final challenge: getting into the celery root. If you have kids that need to use a little extra energy, get them into the kitchen or around the table/cutting board area and hand them a celery root and a knife. Emeril says to take the ends off with a serrated knife first. Then peel the root like a potato and cut into chunks. The chunks then get shredded in a food processor with a fine shredding blade. I must have found the medium sized blade so my shreds were larger than intended.
Then I salted the celery root and remembered to taste it raw. It did remind me of french fries, just not fried, not baked either, but crunchy with a celery flavor. Then I remembered to pull the lemon out of the fridge and I heated it in the oven for a few moments before squeezing the juice out of the lemon. After squeezing out 1 1/2 tsps of lemon juice into the shredded celery root. Set this aside.
Next, Mix the mustard and red wine vinegar in a mixing bowl. While whisking, add the oil in a slow drizzle to form an emulsion(thick, cloudy liquid). Season with the remaining 1/4 tsp of salt and white pepper. Okay, one more confession-I bought mixed peppercorns before I started this, and that is what I use for all pepper in all recipes. Guess I'm not so exact, after all.
Next, add in 1/4 cup finely chopped mixed soft herbs-parsley, chives, thyme and marjoram. I only had parsley and some dried thyme. That's what went in the dressing. Finally add in the minced gherkin(2 tsps or 1 gherkin) and 1 1/2 Tbsp. minced drained nonpareil capers.
Toss all this with the celery root and serve immediately or refridgerate in a nonreactive airtight container for up to 2 days. The scientist in me is curious, what happens in two days? Another part of me knows, it starts to smell foul and go bad.
It ends up tasting robust even with the light celery root flavor and texture. It even feels a bit hearty, but it isn't. It's like the perfect necklace, just fancy enough to be noticed, but understated enough to wear everyday if you want.
I will definitely make this recipe again. First, I will experiment more with Celery root. I think its a fun little vegetable.
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