Celery Is Like a Tiger

Natalie Goldberg once compared celery to a tiger. Is that a valid comparison? How is celery like a tiger? Let me count the ways. Celery has ribs. Tigers have ribs. Celery has a stalk; tigers stalk. If you bite off more than you can chew from a celery stalk, you'd better have strong sharp teeth to handle that mouthful. Tigers have strong sharp teeth.

 

I must admit that I know considerably more about celery than I do about tigers. Celery lowers the blood pressure, but only if you eat three or four long stalks a day. Celery is easier to chew if you peel the strings from the outside stalks. Celery is best when you dip it in sea salt (but that certainly doesn't help the blood pressure). And it's wonderful spread with peanut butter (preferably chunky organic freshly ground peanut butter). People used to spread celery with "pimiento cheese," a favorite Southern form of cheese back in the olden days (and probably still, but I haven't been in the South since 1968). You could buy Kraft-made pimiento cheese in little jars and then use the empty jars as juice glasses. It's a mixture of roasted red peppers (pimientos) and grated cheddar (?) cheese.

 

When I lived in the South I was contemptuous of pimiento cheese, as I was of so many things there. I was very young and very snobbish. I hated pinto beans cooked with ham and served on cornbread. I hated collard greens boiled with salt pork and served over corn bread. Both of these are favorites now (though I use less pork fat in the cooking than my mother-in-law did).

 

But pimiento cheese? Well, I wouldn't buy it from Kraft, I can tell you for sure. I might make my own, but I think I can live without it.

 

Back to the celery. Braised celery. Now there's a concept. Why would you do that? A waste of good cooking fuel, since no one in the family will eat it. Maybe you could puree it after braising and make a nice celery soup.

 

We haven't even touched on celery root (celeriac), which I'd never heard of it until I moved to Toronto and saw bins of it at our local greengrocers. What were those softball-sized lumps covered with black dirt? How were you supposed to peel them? Or eat them? Black dirt hid under every rootlet and in the pockets and crevices that seamed the ball. Celery root was a mystery for years, but now I love it.

 

And tigers? Here's what I know about tigers: "Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger! Has anybody seen that tiger?" And so forth. Also, imprinted on my mind is the picture of the tigers in "Little Black Sambo", each one dressed in one of the little boy's pieces of finery, and each one saying, "Now I'M the grandest tiger in the jungle!" Vanity, vanity. The tigers ended up, you will remember, chasing each other in a circle, faster and faster, until they melted into a pool of sweet butter, which Little Black Sambo took home to pour on the pancakes his mother was making for him. There's a moral there somewhere.

 

You could, of course, forget about the tiger, forget about the celery and the celery root, and simply perfume your soups with celery-tasting lovage instead. Plant lovage in your garden and it will come back every year, giving you more celery flavor than you'll ever be able to use.

 

Copyright 2010 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com