Mashed celery root and potatoes

May 23, 2010 at 1:36 pm (B_minus (2.5 stars), Fall recipes, French, Georgeanne Brennan, Root vegetables, Starches, Summer recipes)

I bought a big celery root to make Locro last week, but I only used a small fraction of it.  I decided to use the rest of it to make another recipe out of The Vegetarian Table: France by Georgeann Brennan.  The recipe is titled “celery root and potato puree”, and for some reason I thought it was going to be a soup.  But it turned out with a consistency more like mashed potatoes.Basically you cube the (unpeeled) potatoes and boil them in salted water for ten minutes.  Then you add the cubed (peeled) celery root and boil for another ten minutes.  You drain the veggies (save the water for veggie broth!) and mash them up with a little milk and butter and salt and pepper.

One thing I wasn’t sure about was how large a “medium-sized baking or boiling potato” is.  Nor was I sure how large a “large celery root” is.

Both Derek and I enjoyed this dish.  It was quite simple, and my celery root was perhaps a tad undercooked, but it was homey and satisfying.  Brennan says “The distinctive, sharp flavor of celery root blended with the earty taste of potatoes and the richness of milk and butter is as comforting a dish as one could want.”  This recipe wasn’t particularly rich tasting, but comforting nontheless.

Brennan says you can serve this as a first course, but I can’t quite see how.  To me it would make more sense as a vegetable side dish, maybe with the cassoulet of flageolet beans.

Rating: B

Derek: B+