Goblin Fruit

Autumn has definitely arrived. A steady rain greeted me as I headed out to tend to the chickens and a hat and coat were grabbed to keep off the worst of it. The rain was forecast to linger for the next couple of days, so I needed an indoor activity to keep me busy.

I spent the morning pottering and sorting out another batch of honey. There is a lot of waiting while the set honey liquifies and it seems that I spent this time drinking coffee.

With another four and a half pounds of honey bottled, my thoughts turned to the afternoon's entertainment. We had a few leeks and some celery lingering in the bottom of the fridge and my eye had been caught by a couple good sized celeriac in the veg patch.  Hat and coat were deployed again and I wandered out with a fork.* 

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, although most might say that celeriac is the goblin of the veg patch. The creamy white bulb is about six inches across and its fine network of roots bring a up a huge clump of earth when they are hauled from the ground.  After shaking off a few pounds of soil and trimming off the fine roots, one is left with a muddy, distorted bulb that is entwined with coarse grasping roots.*** 

It is a multi-stage process to prep the damned things.  First, most of the soil is washed off in one of the water tanks in the garden. Then the larger roots are cut away. The various creases, crevices and nodules are packed with earth and much trimming, scrubbing and washing is needed before one is able to peel away the outer skin and reveal the creamy white flesh.

They may be goblin fruit but they are worth the effort to grow and prepare. They have so much more flavour than the prewashed examples available in the supermarket.

After prepping the celeriac, each hypocotyl weighed about 750 g and were used to make up a double batch of James Martin's creamy celeriac soup. We now have five litres of this beautiful soup bagged and stored in the freezer.

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* Garden implement rather than cutlery. I'd look a complete chump trying to dig up an hypocotyl** with a piece of kitchenware. Context!

** Most seem to refer to celeriac as a root vegetable, but it is actually a swollen stem just above where the roots form ... the hypocotyl.

*** I'll take some photos next time I dig one up. They really are an odd looking thing.