A comfort food side dish of root vegetables simply simmered and mashed with butter and cream.
One of my favorite subjects is food. No surprise there. When I meet someone new, especially someone whose people did not grow up a stove's throw from where we are chatting, I like to ask about favorite foods.
If you've lived in places far different from where you grew up, I'll ask you about what foods you remember from your time away. I'm deliberately avoiding use of the term 'exotic' here, because Arkansas and Louisiana are as exotic to me as British Columbia and Nepal.
As I chat with folks about food, I find I am more interested in those comfort foods that we crave, not Your Most Memorable Meal [unless it was memorable because of the warm feelings evoked of good company and good flavors--not dramatic showmanship].
This comforting side dish came about because of a conversation with the guy doing routine maintenance on my furnace. He's from England, living and working as an HVAC technician in the US, and when I brought up what foods he misses most, he said his mom's celeriac mash. He described it as a simple dish of celeriac, potatoes, and carrots. Mashed together with a bit of butter and cream.
I had a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share celeriac in the crisper and decided to make this for my family. It is simple, homey, humble, unassuming--an excellent addition to a plate of food. Taken by itself it could be considered boring to some, but I don't need my food to be always in my face. This was a nice companion to roasted chicken. It would be terrific in an array of Thanksgiving sides. Leftovers would make a nice crust for an egg casserole, like my Hatch Chile, Egg and Potato Casserole.
For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. For more recipes using Celeriac, please see my Celeriac Recipes Collection. For more recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and garden abundance. I'm sharing more side dishes on Pinterest and my FB page. For more information on How to Use This Blog, click here.