KC 277 – Crisp Celery and Chicken Remoulade Salad
Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we’re munching as much as we can. I’m Jon O’Guin, and I have to tell y’all, today’s post has been ENGULFED in chaos. And there’s not even a lot to say about it! I’ll explain why, but of course, if you just want to dish up, click this link. For everyone else, let’s dig in.
Speed is Key
So, the brutally honest truth behind why I don’t have a lot to talk about with this dish is because, when you get down to it, I picked the dish for selfish reasons: this was yet another instance of “Jon is feeling caged in and rushed, so he panicked, and did something easy.” As I mentioned in the Granita post briefly, I have very much over-booked myself in June/July. I had in-person rehearsals for a show opening in July, digital rehearsals for a show opening in August, and I had to go out to Leavenworth so I could, you know, make some money this year.
Part of that money-making expedition led to me meeting a very tiny kitten. Double value.
And in Leavenworth, I like to TRY and reduce my need for cooking as much as possible, for a variety of reasons. At home, for instance, I know, within certain bounds of certainty, what cooking vessels we have, spices, tools, etc. Further, I roughly know where most things ARE. I am familiar with cooking in the space. I am less certain in all of those regards with Site Otaku Joe Seguin’s (whom I stay with while in Leavenworth) kitchen. One of our earliest posts on the site involves me being surprised that he doesn’t own a blender, and similar discoveries are frequent appearances in past posts. Further is the matter of energy: Leavenworth is a town with more extreme weather than Port Orchard. Like, right now, the NW is in a super-hot heat wave. It is predicted to hit 110 in my hometown Monday, and then drop down into the low 90’s Tuesday, and spend the rest of the week in the high 80’s. Leavenworth is supposed to hit 110 Monday, 113 Tuesday, and then drop to 100 for the rest of the week. Because of the higher, drier climate, when Leavenworth gets hot, it’s hotter. When it gets cold, it’s colder. Combine that with adding ~30 hours a week of working to my schedule, and trying to make time to see my friends and co-workers socially, given the distance between us, and it’s very common for me to be a lot more worn out at the end of a day in Leavenworth or to have fewer free nights to write All of this means that whenever I’m planning to come to Leavenworth, especially in the summer, I try to crank out several recipes before I leave, in order to give myself some breathing room.
Nope, no room to breathe at all up here.
That line is actually doubly funny, because the picture is taken from the middle of a bridge for the highway. that BAKES in the sun all day. This is, legitimately, a pretty bad place to stop and breathe.
It was particularly desirable this year, because, as I mentioned, one of the shows I’m in OPENS in July. There will be a couple weeks where I am driving back to Port Orchard to act on the weekend, and then back to Leavenworth to work the week itself. Yes, like many of you, I will end up with roughly 5 hours of commuting every week…I just take it in the lump sum form. Mix in EVEN MORE CHAOS (putting down Blue, my brother’s upcoming wedding, my recent discovery of an amber ring that has empowered me as a secret defender of the Underkingdom, trying to find something portable to sleep on in Leavenworth that doesn’t deflate like every air-mattress I’ve used, and I’m not worried about rolling off of in the middle of the night) and it’s been a stressful time. Hell, There is at least 50+ dollars-worth of desserts, snacks, and electronics I forgot to bring with me, because the two days I spent packing I also spent fighting a crippling wave of executive dysfunction, brought on by a mixture of heat, stress, and probably that damn amber ring.
So it’s little wonder that I turned to a resource that specifically comforted me that it would be simple and fairly quick.
“Tuesday Night’s Alright for Frying” never took off as much as the other songs.
Milk It For What It’s Worth
I apologize for Title Jon. We got distracted, and it’s now 1:30, and yet still almost 80 degrees, so I know we’re going to have to give up soon and let morning/Monday night Jon finish this, but we gotta try. The weirdest thing is that I haven’t really been feeling the heat of this heat-wave. I know, objectively, that it’s hotter, and walking around in the sun is terrible, but outside of direct sunlight, it comes across more as…a kind of pervasive cloud. A sort of fuzzy “who cares?” energy basting my actions. (editor’s note: while that has been the predominant experience, there have been several hours where it’s pushed into full on “Oh, wow, I’m in a basement underground and it’s still uncomfortably warm”) Hell, It’s been such a pain, that it wasn’t until I went to upload and edit photos that I realized that I have had the WRONG NUMBER for this post. Go look at the URL: I uploaded this as 279) Anywho, back to the topic.
We’ve talked about Milk Street several times, but just to recap: Milk Street is the company that formed when the former editor-in-chief of America’s Test Kitchen, Chris Kimball, just bailed to start his own company, for reasons I have forgotten. Contract disputes, probably? (Re-familiarizing myself with the matter: yeah, with some implicit dashes of corporate/personal issues: talks about getting a more business-trained leadership for ATK started right around the same time that Kimball was getting engaged to/marrying a woman who would go on to be a co-founder and producer at his new venture. So we’re probably looking at him trying new things, talking about ideas he’s got for a company with his new wife, but it won’t work with ATK, who are trying to go more corporate/America focused…this is wild speculation, but it sounds familiar enough to be plausible.)
Chris Kim-ballin’ is a real O.G. - Orville Gangster. From the Redenbacher tyuf.
Milk Street’s big idea is…kind of a more polished version of what I do, for people like me: finding new dishes, or approaches to dishes, or ingredients, and bringing them to a (mostly) American audience. Chris calls it an approach centered on ingredients over time: where ATK focuses on trying a dish again and again until they nail the kind of “platonic ideal” of the dish, whereas Milk Street is trying to be more global, and make bolder/more interesting flavor choices than a more “standard” approach might give. The same general idea builds into their “Tuesday Night” line, a series of recipes meant to try and help you incorporate global flavors into your weeknight meal repertory, with recipes that take under an hour (theoretically) to cook.
The Twin Powers
As such, when I explain that today’s recipe is based off of céleri rémoulade, I want you to understand that I didn’t really put a lot of effort beforehand into figuring out what that meant, (or how much of a pain auto-correct was going to be about that name) and, having found the answer…there’s just not much there. The name is, as it seems, just French for “celery remoulade”, and the explanation of the dish is very simple: it’s diced/shredded celery in a remoulade sauce, as the name implied. The MOST confusing/interesting part, I think, for my average reader is that when this recipe talks about celery, the celery it’s talking about is a little different.
I just don’t see where to smear the peanut butter, if I’m honest.
That is celery ROOT, also known as celeriac, and if you’ve never cooked with it before, it’s very easy to understand: it’s basically a potato that tastes kind of like celery. Specifically, it is a type of celery, that grows a big hypocotyl, a calorie storage organ for the plant. In a specific family of plants, these storage organs are called “tubers”. They technically aren’t in celery, for reasons that I do not possess the botanical knowledge to comprehend, beyond something to do with placement. Meaning that, yes, Arnold, it’s not a tuber.
It’s a vegetable I associate fairly strongly with Britain, I believe due to PROPAGANDA. By which I mean the UK has a very interesting relationship between its television companies, and the government, which makes public health/awareness campaigns easier to administrate there. As such, I feel like the UK’s “Five A Day” campaign (an effort to convince people to have 5 servings of fruits or vegetables a day) had a much deeper cultural impact than the US’s comparable initiatives. You are much more likely to hear a British food personality mention “five-a-day” than an American one talk about fruit and veg consumption beyond the basics: “People need to eat more”, “A big healthy serving”, etc.
Alright, so if celery root isn’t super interesting, what about remoulade? Remoulade is, and I’m being technical here: spicy mayo. Specifically, it’s a mixture of mayo, mustard, pickles/onions/herbs/capers. It’s basically spicier tartar sauce,
Here it is as part of a fried fish sandwich in…Europe somewhere. I have already forgotten. THE HEAT.
The dish celeri remoulade is like, a French steakhouse version of coleslaw: a spiced and crisp accompaniment to richer meat dishes. Now, obviously, from the title we’ve all long-since forgotten, things are going to change for this dish. So let’s get into it, and highlight the difference.
So Simple
Now, the first thing I have to admit with this recipe is that I technically messed it up. But we’ll explain how/why in a second, because this dish is basically all mise en place. The first thing you gotta do is wash/peel your celery root.
“Jon forgets what part of the process he took the photo of” strikes again! Pretend this is midway through the next paragraph.
Cut it into 1” long matchsticks. If you haven’t done that before, it’s easy, but a little tedious: you just cut it into 1/8” (3mm) wide planks, and then cut those planks into strips of the same width. Boom. If you’re not super happy with the results, don’t worry, because you can practice some more by doing the same thing to a Granny smith apple after you’ve cored it.
You’re also going to thinly slice a fennel bulb, and chop some parsley. So the first 15 minutes of this recipe are really just prepping produce. And while it might not feel like it, this is actually where the interesting ideas are coming in. Because what we’re encountering right now is a sort of culinary Voltron: a bunch of ingredients that the pros already know work together apart, being brought together to form one super-being. Each of the major ingredients (Chicken, Apple, Parsley, Celery, Mustard, and Fennel) all have pretty solid histories with each other: apples and mustard are super-common companions on cheese trays and with pork chops. Fennel loves hanging out in salads with Apple, and tarragon (a fennl-flavored herb) is a classic chicken seasoning. You just don’t normally see them all together at the same time.
Certainly not so grossly under-dressed.
You’re ALSO going to need to toast some nuts, because seriously, this recipe claims to only take 20 minutes, but that’s because it’s hiding a LOT of prep-work. (With 2 people, I think you could get it done in time. It took me about 40 minutes, with about 6-7 minutes of help.) In the end, you’ll have a whole heap of ingredients in a bowl. Where I will admit to making a minor mistake with this recipe: namely, I misread the instructions, and didn’t see that I was supposed to pre-mix the remoulade ingredients in the bowl, and then toss the salad ingredients in the sauce. Instead, I toss them all in, and mixed them together a la minute, as the French might say.
They would not.
The result was honestly pretty solid: I think I could have done with a little more attention to detail in getting my fennel sliced a little thinner, and personally I think a slightly different proportion of ingredients might play better, but overall, my first taste of it was pretty positive. My main sorrow is that I can really only speak on it as a first taste: we tried it fresh after making it, and traditionally, these kind of salads improve when left to mingle, but I finished this recipe the night before I had to leave, so I didn’t get another shot at it. But, for a quick summer salad with fruit, vegetables, and meat, and one that, if you buy pre-shredded chicken, doesn’t need any actual cooking (especially valuable given the current conditions in my area, where the heat wave was THROTTLING my ability to get things done.), I’d call it a great success.
THURSDAY: JON PROBABLY REVIEWS THE COOKBOOK, BECAUSE THINKING UP NEW IDEAS IS HARD.
MONDAY: PROBABLY STEAK OR BREAD. WE DID THE BURGERS LAST WEEK, SO THE 4TH IS ALREADY COVERED.
BEHOLD THE
Recipe
Crisp Celery and Chicken Remoulade Salad
Serves 4
Ingredients
Remoulade
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup whole grain mustard
¼ cup drained capers, roughly chopped + 1 tbsp caper brine
2 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp ground black pepper
Salad
3 cups shredded chicken
5 ounces celery root, peeled and cut into 1” matchsticks
1 green apple, cored, skin-on, cut into match-sticks
1 bulb fennel, trimmed, halved, cored, and thinly sliced
½ cup packed roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
¾ cup toasted and chopped walnuts or hazelnuts
Additional salt and black pepper to taste
Preparation
In a large bowl, mix together remoulade ingredients. Add salad ingredients, and fold remoulade through salad until well combined. Serve.
