To Stew Celery
Cut the stalks of celery into inch pieces; simmer until tender in a little water; add sweet cream; season to taste with salt and white pepper and a little butter.
A three-line recipe that assumes the cook knows the proportions. The whole thing turns on cooking the celery in a small enough amount of water that the liquid becomes the sauce.
- QuantitiesFor a large head of celery (about 1 lb trimmed), use roughly 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup cream. Serves four as a side dish.
- "Sweet cream"Means fresh, unsoured cream, as distinct from soured cream. Heavy or whipping cream is the right substitute; light cream will thin out and may curdle if the pan is too hot.
- A little waterTake this literally. Barely cover the celery and let it reduce as the celery cooks so the cream has something concentrated to join. Draining off a pot of celery water throws away the flavour.
- TimingInch pieces of celery take roughly 12 to 18 minutes at a bare simmer, depending on how coarse the stalks are. Outer stalks from a modern head can be stringy; peel them or use the inner ribs.
- After the cream goes inKeep it below a boil and cook only until it thickens slightly, three or four minutes. Hard boiling will break the cream and overshoot the celery into mush.
- White pepperLikely chosen so no dark flecks show in a pale dish. Its flavour is not identical to black pepper, being mustier from the way the berries are soaked and hulled; use it if you have it.
- Where it belongsA creamed vegetable of this kind suits duck, pheasant or a plain roast chicken.
Celery was once a more considered vegetable than it is now: grown in trenches and banked with soil to blanch the stalks pale and mild, sold by the head with the root still attached, and often set out raw in a tall cut-glass celery vase as a mark of a well-appointed table. Cookbooks of the period commonly treat it as something to be stewed, creamed or served in sauce rather than merely chopped into a mirepoix. Celery sauces and celery-and-onion stuffings served with roast fowl are part of the same older English and American practice.