Knobbly by sight and to grow
There’s no escaping them. Every family, coffee group, club and corporate workplace has one: a person with an unhealthy interest in something obscure that no one else gives two hoots about. You know who I mean – that conversational monotonist whose idea of casual chit-chat is to back you into a corner and harangue you with their theories on taxation policy, the price of petrol, the meaning of dreams, NCEA levels, craft beer or anything to do with golf.
I’m one of those people, and this winter my specialist subject is Apium graveolens var. rapaceum .Tobe honest, this bulbous Mediterranean vegetable sounds a lot more appetising in Latin than in English, in which it is more commonly known as celeriac, celery root, turnip-rooted celery or, ahem, knob celery.
Celeriac is an unusual vegetable that tastes like celery but looks like a pale Jabba the Hutt with warts. If you think it’s an ugly brute in the shops, it’s even uglier fresh out of the garden. Its bulging bottom – what we think of as its roots are actually hefty hypocotyls – sit proud of the soil with an unshaved bikini line of tangled tentacles. These rubbery roots are always trimmed off before it gets to market.
If you’ve tried and failed to grow decent celeriac before, you’re in good company. It’s a notoriously finicky beast that doesn’t care for long spells of hot, dry weather. Strange, then, that its key growing season is summer.
Sow seed of ‘Sedano di Verona’ or ‘Prinz’ direct in deep, rich soil in midspring, after the risk of late frosts has passed, and bide your time until autumn, at which point it will either have fattened up satisfactorily or, more likely, bolted to seed and rendered itself useless.
I’ve sown celeriac at least 10 times, but this year is the first time I’ve been successful. What did I do differently? Nothing, unless you count cursing the weather gods.
Last spring I put in nine rows of nine plants spaced 20cm apart. Things got off to a bad start when my seedlings were eaten down to the ground by rabbits, but they grew back when the rabbits moved on to maul my strawberries. Then the rains came. In the first six months of this year, more than a metre of rain fell, and my celeriac bulbs soaked it all up like loofah sponges, swelling to the size of baby butternut squash. (Big isn’t necessarily better with celeriac, as large bulbs crack at the core and develop internal browning in their hollow hearts.)
When buying celeriac, look for softball-sized bulbs that are firm to touch and feel weighty in the hand. To store, lop off the green tops and pop the bulbs in a resealable plastic bag in the vegetable crisper of your fridge. If it keeps its cool (between one and five degrees Celsius), celeriac will store well for up to six months, although its intense celery flavour dissipates over time.
Unfortunately, like its knobbly little friend, the Jerusalem artichoke, celeriac is not a particularly versatile winter vegetable. Even the commercial growers’ lobby group, vegetables.co.nz, could only rustle up half a dozen recipes for its website. They recommend roasting celeriac with other root vegetables, grating it raw into salads, baking it as chunky wedges, mashing it with parsnips and layering thinly sliced celeriac in a potato and leek gratin flavoured with feta and a sprig of fresh sage.
My children are happy to help me harvest celeriac but have proved rather less enthusiastic when it comes to eating it. So far I’ve managed to sidestep their suspicions by covertly grating it into spaghetti bolognese sauce, vegetable soup and chicken casseroles. I’ve also made celeriac chips (tasty), fritters (fiddly) and deepfried croquettes (scrummy), but it’s at its best in a posh puree. Peel, roughly chop and boil a couple of celeriac in salted water until tender then drain and press the flesh through a sieve. Whisk in lashings of butter, cream, and salt and pepper until it’s as velvetsmooth as baby food.
Unlike celeriac puree, which is easy to swallow, celeriac is not always easy to slip into a conversation, but needs must. We’re halfway through winter and I’m not even halfway through my crop, which is why I’ve taken to fobbing off my surplus on friends, neighbours, acquaintances and strangers from osteopaths to potters and primary school teachers.
I might be a celeriac bore, but at least I’m sharing the love.
Celeriac is an unusual vegetable that tastes like celery but looks like a pale Jabba the Hutt with warts.