Use celery

We had some leftover celery in our house that was starting to get a little old.  My wife left me a to-do list this afternoon with only a few simple items but one was a bit of a throw down:  Use celery.

So what does one do with a bunch of left-over celery?  My first thought was roasting, but I decided against it.  My second thought was to consult a few cookbooks.  There are not many celery recipes.  It is most usually used as a flavoring ingredient and not as a focus of a dish.  I did find a couple of recipes in Julia Child's book.

Now, a disclaimer, I use Julia Child almost exclusively as a reference.  She has a great deal of information in her cookbooks but after I used one of her cookbooks for an all-Julia Christmas feast, I was very disappointed.  In short, Mrs Child liked to cook the hell out of vegetables.  So this afternoon I simply perused one of her books to find some seasoning ideas, etc.

What started as a dish based on her braised celery ended up as basically a Cream of Celery Soup. Not the most creative or "outside the box" solution but I was able to accomplish two things:

1.  I used the celery.
2.  I made dinner.

So here's how it went

Celery
Apple
Sherry
Chicken Broth
Nonfat yogurt
egg beaters
nonfat cream
Celery Salt

Trim and wash the celery and place it in a roasting pan.  Shred an apple over the celery and sprinkled all of it with salt and pepper.  Pour sherry and chicken broth in the roasting pan until the celery is about half way covered.  Braise at 325º,  checking occasionally to make sure Mrs Child's cardinal sin isn't committed.  Braise for about 30-35 minutes.  The celery should be moist and yet still firm.

Removed the celery and chop.  Placed the juices and shredded apple in a sauce pan.  Add more chicken broth to sauce pan and gently raise the heat.  Whisk nonfat yogurt, egg beaters and nonfat creamer in a bowl.  Then whisk egg mixture into sauce pot and add sliced celery.  Bring just to a boil slowly, stirring constantly.  Adjust the seasoning with celery salt.


Comments:

Now, a count of the ingredients will show that there are actually eight, not seven; salt and pepper not withstanding.  I suppose that this is not the most promising sign for my endeavors on this blog.  But I will be perfectly honest:  I am not a celery fan and I was simply trying to make something that was edible to celery and non-celery fans alike.  I didn't really think I would share this recipe but seeing as my to-do list was so short this evening I figured this was the night to start constructing my blog.

My critique of this dish is that I used too much yogurt and not enough cream.  My wife agrees.  Oh, and adding the bacon would have been a good idea (as it quite often is) but then I would have had to name this blog nine ingredients!

My wife asked a very good question:  Which ingredient was the least needed; which one could I omit with little or no impact?  Definitely, it would be the apples.  They added very little to the dish.