Celeriac with olive oil and orange juice

One of my favourite winter vegetables is the good old celeriac. It is one of those love or hate vegetables for most kids in Turkey as the sharp taste and smell of the celeriac can be quite unappetizing for some. But not for this one.

In cold winter nights, my mother used to make etli kereviz, a celeriac, potato and meat stew cooked in a simple broth. She would then get a scoopful of the broth and mix it with lemon juice and one egg and stir it into the broth just before serving to give it that cloudy look and the creamy taste.

Zeytinyagli kereviz, a cold served dish made by cooking cubed pieces of celeriac, potatoes and carrots in olive oil and lemon juice with sauteed onions was also a regular in our house.

She also used to make this amazing kereviz salatasi, grated celeriac salad mixed with yoghurt, mayo and walnuts, as an appetiser for the raki gatherings. Even though I was too young to drink raki, I always filled my plate with heaped spoonfuls of the celeriac salad and gulped it down with slices of fresh sourdough bread.



It was also very much favoured by my paternal grandfather and my mother would make it for him when he came to visit. By the end of the dinner, my grandfather would take his plate of mezzes, fill his glass with more raki and go to one of the bedrooms that looks over the water. He would sit there for hours on his own watching the beautiful Bosphorus adorn its diamond necklace as the night fell.

I used to ask him if he was ever bored to sit there on his own and he would say "Never from watching this beauty". He would then start telling me one of his many amazing flight stories, like the time they have flown the first fleet of DC9 planes from America to Turkey and how they had to take out and store the seats in the cargo section of the planes and put a blow up petrol tank into the passenger cabin so that they could cross over the Atlantic without refuelling.

I look at my father now and can already see glimpses of my late grandfather. Yes, we all inherited the thick eyebrows and the stern looks so no surprises there, but what I see is beyond the facial expressions. It is the similarities like the way he leans onto something with his arm and crosses one leg over the other while he is talking, the way he ties his hands on the small of his back when he walks or how he spends hours with his plate of mezzes and glass of raki on the terrace of our summer house overlooking the water. And hopefully someday he will be telling his flight stories to his grandchildren.

Oh and my father also loves celeriac, but I think his favourite is portakalli kereviz rather than kereviz salatasi. The minute my dad sees this dish in the fridge, he would say "Oooh, then we are having raki tonight."

Raki or no raki, this dish is a masterpiece in its own right. The bitterness of the celery, the tangyness of the orange juice and the sweetness of the carrots and onion forms a heavenly threesome.

It has such a delicate, light and clean taste that it is hard to believe making it is so very simple and requires almost no expertise.

The only trick is to be patient and carefully assembly the dish to ensure that all the vegetables stay in one piece and onion rings do not break apart.

Traditionally, all zeytinyaglilar (vegetables cooked in olive oil and served cold) are served as part of cold appetisers on a raki table. But I like finishing my meal with portakalli kereviz to savour the taste a bit longer.


Portakalli Kereviz (Celeriac in olive oil and orange juice)

Ingredients:

1 medium celeriac
1 large brown onion
1 carrot
1 orange
1 lemon
4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar






Here is how:

Squeeze the juice of the orange and put aside.

Squeeze the juice of the lemon. Put the lemon juice in a large bowl and fill the bowl 3/4 with water.

Peel the celeriac and slice them horizontally into 1 cm thick round slices and immediately place them into the lemon water to prevent them from browning.

Peel the onion and slice it into around 1 cm thick rounds. Make sure that you have as many onion rounds as the number of celeriac rounds.

Peel the carrot and slice them into 0,5 cm thick rounds.

Put the oil in a wide and shallow pan and place the carrots on the pan. Quickly sauté the carrots for a minute or two and then spread them evenly on the pan and place an onion round in between the carrots. Then place a celeriac round on top of each onion round.

Pour the orange juice into the pan to cover the base completely and sprinkle the sugar. If there is not enough juice to cover the base, you can add a little bit of water.

Place the lid and on a very low heat simmer the vegetables for about 10-15 minutes or until the celeriac is soft when pierced with a fork. Make sure to check in intervals to ensure there is enough water in the pan so that the vegetables to do not burn.

Once cooked, turn off the heat and remove the lid and let it cool for half an hour or so.

On a shallow serving dish, place the celeriac in the bottom, top it with a ring of onion, and then one carrot. Scatter the rest of the carrots around the dish and pour in any remaining juices from the pan.

Cool completely and serve.

Afiyet Olsun!