Undoubtedly...

...one of the ugliest vegetables I've ever seen.

 *shudder*

And its terrible to admit, but I've never even picked one up before because the look of it creeped me out so much. Any idea what it is?

 Kinda looks like one of the robots in the Matrix, eh?

Now I know root vegetables don't lend themselves to 'prettiest on the stand' in any way, but come on. A potato or carrot is a whole lot prettier than this thing (it is a celeriac by the way). But I got one, and I hate waste, so I had to get over my heebie-jeebies and touch it. I was expecting something to crawl out of it. I'm still a little grossed out looking at the picture!

So why did I have a celeriac in my possession you ask? Well, I moved recently and in addition to the loss of being around my Irish family, I'm also at the opposite end of the country from the wonderful farmer's market I got all my veggies from. Bummer. So I asked my fella's mom, V, if she could pick me up a few things from her market and I'd look for a market near me in the meantime. So while she was getting my sweet potatoes, carrots and eggs, the farmer said if it was soup I was making I should take this celeriac as well (apparently all the cool chicks who make soup use them). When I looked in the bag this morning my heart sank a little bit. I didn't want to touch it. But in the end I'm glad I did.

I am out of celery at the mo, so I figured I'd try it out in my soup. It has a very delicate scent of celery which piqued my curiosity. It actually smelled really nice. I used it to make sweet potato soup and it was just lovely. I used half of the celeriac (about a pound) with 3 small sweet potatoes, an onion, a couple of carrots and a hit of curry powder. I was worried the celeriac would overpower everything else, but it was really tasty! It is a much nicer flavour than celery in the soup and I think it will be replacing celery in my house.

I wondered how it would fare in other preparations. Tonight we had stuffed chicken breasts and roasted vegetables. I diced half of the remaining celeriac and added it to some potatoes, carrots, courgettes and onions. Tossed with a little olive oil, oregano and garlic, roasted it and crossed my fingers. I didn't need to worry - it was totally delish! We both really enjoyed it (I didn't tell A until after that he'd eaten that really ugly, gnome looking root) and another point for the celeriac.

So all the lessons we learned when we were small apply to vegetables too: don't judge a book by its cover. Or avoid a vegetable because it is scary-looking :)

The yummy mixed roasted veg (including celeriac!) with a glass of wine and a roaring fire. Can't beat it!

Have you ever had celeriac? Or do you have a fruit/vegetable/other food stuff you can't bring yourself to try because its appearance grosses you out?

Peace,

Jenn x