I am always throwing out celery. I need one stalk for something…and never use the rest. Cleaning out the rotter (fridge) yesterday I discovered 3 bunches of celery…they were all still good, but what was I going to do with three bunches of celery? Solution: Celery soup and celery mashed potatoes.
I’ve been experimenting with the soups this winter. I made a mushroom soup, a couple versions of butternut squash, but hadn’t attempted the green variety. So here was a great opportunity. I did a search on epicurious to find some recipies that used celery. It was about 10 degrees in Chicago…so soup was in the back of my mind.
I found a good starting point recipe for the soup. When I am cooking something totally new…sometimes I like to start with a recipe to get me going in the right direction.
Then I needed something to go with the celery soup. I’m sure chicken would have gone well, but we had recently had chicken…so I went with pork. I usually do the pork on the grill, rubbed with some spices…but I wanted to “branch out” so I went with an apple/pear apple sauce and a cider gravy.
The goods from the store…Celery, Leeks, Granny Smith apples, pears, chicken broth, creme fraiche, goat cheese, yukon golds, shallot, bread, garlic, pork, and a lemon.
I started out chopping all my ingredients, peeling potatoes, etc. I used one apple, 8 or 9 stalks of celery and 6 potatoes. I also used half a clove of garlic and about a tablespoon of shallots. I added about 5 tbls of butter at the start. I ended up only cutting up one leek, two was too much.
Now the hard part was over. The butter went into the pot, the shallots and garlic, then the leeks and celery. I reserved about 3/4 of a cup of celery for the potatoes. All this cooked down till the veggies got a bit soft, then I added the 4 cups of stock, and the potatoes. I saved about 2 or 3 of them for the mashed potatoes.
This stuff simmered for a while…maybe 30 minutes. Then went into the blender, and came back out and looked like below. Man I wish I had an immersion blender. I put the soup in to the blender in batches…but it was so hot the steam blew the top of…after burning my hand so I let go of the top. Much cleaning followed.
The soup tasted a little bland. The recipe called for cayenne pepper which I put in, but it wasn’t really rockin. I added a little bit of goat cheese crumbles to give it a different flavor. I also added a little bit of dried thyme, ground sage, and celery seed.
Next was the applesauce, pork, and potatoes. I don’t have as fun pictures of those…But here is how it went down. I took 3 granny smiths and one pear. I peeled them, and diced them and put them in a bowl. Apples and pears (save for about 1/4 of a cup of each) went into a pot with about 2 tbls of butter, a dash of garlic and shallot. These got cooked up for bit, then some apple cider joined them. I added a bit of salt and cinnamon and stirred often.
At the same time I cooked up the pork. I salted the pork, put some fresh ground pepper, and a bit of cinnamon onto the pork and cooked over the stove in some olive oil to brown the outside. This then went into the over at 425 for 20 minutes or so.
Potatoes got boiled, then mashed, then added a bit of creme fraiche and balanced with skim milk. I then cooked up some of the remaining celery (chopped finely) with some shallot and garlic in a pot and once those were going, dropped in the potatoes and mixed them up.
The pork was nearing completion so I pulled that from the oven and used the pan to make a cider sauce/gravy. A little cider went into the pan whisked with some garlic. I added a touch of cornstarch. Then once all the bits had come up from the pan and it was getting a bit reduced, I tossed in some pears and apples so they would be crunchy, but warm.
With the rest of the meal about ready, I added a bit of creme fraiche to the soup (1/2 a container) this gave it a nice creamyness and helped the flavor as well.
Soup Garnished with a dollop of creme fraiche and a bit of celery
Roast Pork Tenderloin, Cider gravy, applesauce, and celery mash potatoes
Overall, I think it came out pretty tasty. The pork and apple sauce stole the show from the soup in the end. But hey, it used up all that celery!
are you able to buy creme fraiche at the grocery there, or do you get it at fox and obel? the supermarket here doesn’t carry it and i always substitute sour cream? do you think it works as a good equivalent, or do you think plain yogurt works better?
I can get creme fraiche at the normal grocery. Sometimes it is with the yogurt/sour cream section, but most often I find it with the specialty cheeses. Goat Cheese, marscapone, etc. I would say sour cream is a close equivalent. I find the texture to be a bit different though. I might go with full fat sour cream if necessary.