Currently cooking from All About Braising by Molly Stevens
Thanksgiving left me with a surplus of celery, so I took a suggestion from a commentor and tried Stevens’ braised celery recipe.
You start off by trimming and cleaning a bunch of celery stalks and making a celery stock with the trimmings. The stock is poured over the celery stalks and then braised for just over an hour. Once the celery stalks are tender, you top them with bread crumbs and gruyere cheese and bake the dish until the cheese is melted and the top is crunchy and brown.
Honestly, this was a little too much celery-ish for me. I ate a couple of the stalks, then just picked the topping off the rest. The dish felt very one dimensional (celery!) to me, even with the flavorful topping. In a book full of really good dishes, this one was disappointing.
I might like this as we always, cut celery and then boiled it to soft and then we put it in batter and fried it. I liked that alot so this might be good for me.
There isn’t enough bread crumbs and gruyere cheese in the world to make me try this dish. Celery is one of those things that I’d have banned from the planet if only I could. Ick! I think you are so brave to have tried it.