The Vegetable-Led Plate · Main
Celeriac Baked in Salt Dough
- Advanced
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, acid holding everything up to the light, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 1 celeriac, about 800 g, scrubbed hard, root hairs left on
- 500 g plain flour
- 250 g fine sea salt
- 10 g thyme leaves
- 260 ml cold water
- 50 g hazelnuts
- 45 ml cold pressed rapeseed oil
- 15 ml sherry vinegar
- 8 g Dijon mustard
- 10 g flat parsley, chopped
- black pepper
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · celery · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Work the flour, salt and thyme with the water to a stiff, smooth dough, adding the last of the water only if it will not come together; rest it 15 minutes so it rolls without tearing. 15 min
- Roll to 8 mm, wrap the celeriac completely with no thin patches, pinch the seams and patch any split with a scrap: every crack is a steam leak.
- Bake at 200C (390F) for 2 to 2 hours 15 minutes, until a skewer pushed through the crust meets no resistance at the centre and comes out steaming. 120 min
- Rest the sealed parcel 20 minutes so the heat evens out, then crack the crust with the back of a knife and lift the celeriac clear, brushing off any salt that clings. 20 min
- Toast the hazelnuts until they smell of biscuit, crush them and whisk with oil, vinegar, mustard and parsley; peel the celeriac, cut into thick wedges and spoon the dressing over while hot.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauvignon Blanc (Sancerre)
- Also Right
- Grüner Veltliner
- From the Taps
- Berliner weisse
- Zero-Proof
- Cucumber-lime water
Green plates want green wines: vinaigrette’s acid meets its match, and the difficult vegetables surrender to Grüner.
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