A wintery lunch that is not dark brown and meaty.

The last time I attempted to tackle this recipe it ended in disaster.  This time I’d like to think that the end results were much better, but the pictures came out terribly in my opinion. I just can’t win with celeriac.

On with the public shaming.

Two medium sized heads of celeriac were procured from my local Central Market. I don’t know what it is about that place, but I’m always smiling when I walk out the door. If you’re ever in Texas I really recommend you visit one. You’ll understand by the time you leave.

The heads were scrubbed clean, peeled, and then chopped into cubes before being placed in a pot of salted water. In my previous attempt I had used way too much salt, so I made sure to not overdo it this go around. The water was then brought up to a boil, and the celeriac cooked for a little under a half hour. I knew it was finished when a sharp knife went through the flesh easily.

To ensure that my mashed celeriac wasn’t watery I gave the cooked cubes a quick spin in my new salad spinner. I wish I’d have picked one of these bad boys up a while ago. They make removing excess water a snap!

Last go around I shied away from using two sticks of butter because, well… two sticks of butter is a lot, but damn the calories, full speed ahead.  Two sticks of butter were mashed together with the boiled celeriac over a gentle heat until the two were fully combined.

Now at this point I was supposed to add in a handful of chopped celery leaves. I decided to fore-go them because previously they were such a pain in the rear, or more appropriately, in my throat.

The mashed celeriac went into an oven proof Pyrex casserole dish and spread until an even layer had been achieved.
One of the major problems with the previous attempt was that the eggs over cooked. Mr. Henderson says in that book that the dish should be in a hot oven for roughly five minutes, but I remembered that the eggs hadn’t cooked in that time. As an experiment, when making the little indentations for the eggs I made sure they went all the way down to the Pyrex. A few knobs of butter were placed around the eggs before being placed in the oven.

Much better! The eggs are properly cooked, and you can see a slight browning around the edges. Some salt and pepper for seasoning and I was done.

And here’s the finished product.  The missing green celery leaves sure makes for a boring, beige hunk of food, but the flavor was just wonderful.  When broken, the egg yolk added a nice creamy texture to the buttery, dense celeriac mash.  The mash itself was sweet and very rich as you might suspect with that much incorporated butter.

Am I super thrilled with how this remake turned out?  No, not really.  I’m regretting not adding the celery leaves despite the irritation they gave me last time.  But I’m happy enough that I consider this recipe completed.

One down, forty seven to go.