Pickled celery, dried celery

The simplest and quickest of any pickle I've made. This was done mainly as a garnish for my roasted celeriac soup but I fancy you'll be seeing it in plenty of other places. With pork for sure, but I suspect with fish too.

Celery is one of those easy to overlook vegetables. Often salted with onions and carrots for so many savoury bases but not often given pride of the table.

This recipe is based on Nathan Outlaw's. Don't skimp on the fennel seeds.

Pickled Celery

Remove the fibrous base and finely dice one head of celery, cutting thick stems into two or three first then cutting in cubes. Or just chop finely. I wanted the square look. In a pan add 100ml of white wine,  100ml of vinegar, 100ml of water, 100g of sugar,  30g of fennel seeds and a big pinch of salt and bring to the boil. Simmer for a couple of minutes then allow to cool.

The wine is hardly cooked so you will taste it. I prefer a semillon or sauvignon blanc but just use whatever you have open, so long as it's half decent.

Dried Celery

Now, as I'd bought a lot of celery for experimentation, I wondered what powered celery would be like. The quick answer is 'almost non existant'. Celery, as any fule kno, is very, very, very largely water so the oven drying took a full 24 hours at 70°C. I should have gone lower as that may have preserved more of the vivid green colour but I couldn't entangle my oven for two days. Once dried I broke it up and put it in a grinder. Oh boy.

This, some time later, turns to this:

So unless you really, really want to taste powered celery, I'm not sure it's worth the cost and bother. I'm bet you're glad I warned you.