Celery gratin with pot-roast bacon and roasted vegetables

It occurred to me, when I was pondering on how to cook the enormous piece of bacon that we'd procured for Sunday lunch, that as I had the slow cooker out still - it made sense to use it.

I had previously been intending on pot-roasting the bacon, however it was such an enormous piece that I doubted it would fit into any of our saucepans.  So having a sudden brainwave about the slow cooker solved that problem and also got it out of my hair for the cooking period.  I could then concentrate on cooking the other components of the dinner.

At the end of some six or seven hours in the slow cooker, the meat just fell apart.  The top surface had become a slightly odd colour, which I take to have been due to the celery, carrot, onion and other vegetables in the stock.  The flavour was just divine!


I had two fresh beetroot left over from the Borscht and decided to roast these along with some potatoes, carrots and a butternut squash.  I'd wanted to try roasted beetroot for quite some time, so that played into my hands beautifully.  Who knew that roasted beetroot was as lovely as that?  The flavour was very akin to those beetroot crisps you can get, but with the intensity of the softer centre.  Just lovely.


I doused the butternut squash pieces in cumin powder and a little pinch of chilli flakes, which always go so well with butternut squash.  Following roasting, it made for an interesting change of pace in the flavour profile of the whole meal.

However, the unexpected star of the whole proceedings was the Celery Gratin.

Many years ago, I would ring the changes in my diet of microwave dinners by every so often buying a can of celery hearts and mixing up a cheese sauce to pour over them.  I so enjoyed this for a change and the Cauliflower Cheese we made the other day reminded me of it.

Now I know I had resolved to make another cauliflower cheese to have with roast bacon, but I had a feeling that a celery version would be well received by the assembled masses (a.k.a. hubby and Son & heir).  I was right where hubby was concerned, but it was a bit of miss where Son & heir was concerned, who had to be "encouraged" to eat the celery.

However, I thought it was gorgeous - and even had the leftovers for lunch the following day, which tells you how nice it was.

In this, rather more serious version, I used fresh celery and par-boiled it before baking, as I hadn't made one before and wasn't sure how long it would have required to cook from raw.  As it turned out, the 2-3 minutes par-boiling was just perfect as its texture was tender but still fairly firm at the end of the 45 mins baking.

I sprinkled it with breadcrumbs and a little more grated cheddar, to give a nice contrasting crunch.  All in all, it rather upstaged both the bacon and the beetroot!

CELERY GRATIN (serves 4)

Ingredients :

2 celery hearts, or alternatively, 2 bunches of celery - tops, bottom & hoary outside stems removed (use the tops and stems in a stock)
150g butter
2-3 tbsp flour (depending on how thick you like your sauce)
1 pint semi-skimmed milk
half a tsp Cayenne pepper
100ml double cream
1 tsp Dijon mustard
250g mature cheddar, grated
25g parmesan, grated
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat oven to 180deg C/Gas Mark 4.

2.  Prepare the celery by making sure it is scrupulously clean.  This may very well mean you have to dismantle the structure of the hearts, but better that than grit between your teeth!  Chop into pieces some 2 inches long and put into a pan of boiling water for 3 minutes.  Drain and place into a deep baking dish.

3.  Arrange the celery evenly across the dish and set to one side.

4.  In a non-stick pan, melt the butter and when foamy, sprinkle on the flour.  Stir like billy-o, ensuring all the flour is swallowed up by the butter.

5.  After 2-3 minutes cooking, add a splash of milk and stir like crazy to avoid lumps forming.  Continue to add milk and stir until the sauce achieves the quantity and consistency you're looking for.

6.  Add the cayenne, mustard and cream and stir to combine, keeping the sauce at a low simmer.

7.  Add all but a handful of the cheeses and stir to combine.  Taste and adjust the seasoning.

8.  Pour the sauce over the celery, making sure every bit of the celery is covered.

9.  Sprinkle on the breadcrumbs and the last handful of cheese and place into the oven for 45 minutes.

Serve.

Getting back in harness : Menu Plan w/b 6 Sept 11

I think that title - "Getting back in harness" - is entirely appropriate, as that's exactly what it feels like.  Having been away from interesting and new recipes for a couple of weeks, it feels good to get back to some new ideas.

Here's what's on the menu for this week :

Tues : Son - Pizza. Parents - Borscht & crusty bread.

Wed : Cornish pasties & baked beans.

Thurs : Macaroni cheese.

Fri : Lemon & yoghurt baked chicken with savoury rice.

Sat : Slow-cooker Beef Stew & cobbles, with tenderstem broccoli.

Sun : Roast bacon, roast butternut squash & beetroot with celery gratin.

Mon : Tuna pasta bake.

How does that lot look, then?

Tuesday's pizza day was in full effect yesterday, which enabled us to have Borscht for the first time.  I'd never made it before, much less tasted it before, so it was all a bit of a voyage of discovery.  However, it was a completely delicious discovery, which hubby declared was his "best soup evar!".

Anyway, I've done a blog post in which I talk all about it and give the recipe, so I won't witter on here about it.  Watch the blog, as it's the next one to be published!

Tonight is another go at making the Cornish Pasties that got bounced in favour of an indian takeaway, last week.  I'm in a much better place to be making them today, so I think everything worked out just fine in that regard.  I was going to be serving salad with them, but it's been so cold and miserable outside just lately, we decided to opt for good old Baked Beans instead.

Now, Thursday is an Important Day.  Hubby is cooking a Macaroni cheese, which is something he's never attempted before.  He's following a recipe, rather than just winging it, so we've no reason to believe that it'll go anything other than perfectly.  We've got some lovely streaky bacon and have invested in a small pack of Gruyere cheese (incidentally, have you SEEN the price of that stuff? Are the cows made of gold, or what?) so we're all set for a goodie!

I thought that, on Friday, it would be nice to have a fairly easy dinner.  So I'm making the Lemon & yoghurt baked chicken as described on "Everyday Mom's Meals" blog.  All I've got to do here, is remember to defrost the chicken on Thursday, so that it can marinade overnight!  I'm serving it with savoury rice, which I have to admit, I've bought a couple of packets of the stuff.  So shoot me!

When I lived on my own - when I had the horses - savoury rice was one of my staple meals.  I could mix it up, then pop it in the microwave and take the dogs for a walk while it cooked.  With a couple of sausages that had been baking in the oven, it made a superbly quick and remarkably satisfying meal which was very well received at 9pm after two visits to the horses and a day at work!  So this is a bit of a trip down memory lane for me.

I'm really looking forward to Saturday's beef stew.  I've been yearning for a lovely thick warming stew made with Shin of beef, for ages.  To help hubby out, who has had E-NUFF potatoes for a while, I'll be baking some cobbles (scone-like objects) to go with the stew and I'll add some tenderstem broccoli on the side.  Should be gorgeous!

Sunday's dinner formed in my brain a bit back-to-front.  It all began with my wanting a celery gratin (celery hearts in cheese sauce with breadcrumbs on, baked in the oven).  So then I had to think of a roast meat that would go well with it - hence the bacon turned up. 

Being a Sunday dinner, it required a bit more than just the bacon and celery, so I finally decided upon a butternut squash, roasted in the oven, along with the leftover beetroot that didn't get used in the Borscht and some potatoes to make Son & heir happy.  A bit of an odd way of assembling a meal, but I think it works!  Well, I suppose we'll find out, eh?

Monday, as ever, is a storecupboard dinner day.  There was a time that I hated Tuna Pasta Bake and would have been very happy not to have ever seen one again.  Then (and I am a tad embarrassed to admit this), came Homepride's Tuna Pasta Bake sauce in a jar.  I seriously suspect they've put something terribly addictive in this sauce, as I absolutely love it and would be very happy to carry on eating the bake until either the cows came home or until time immemorial.  Considering how negative I am towards sauces such as this, it really is remarkable just how much I love the stuff.

All of which makes a potentially fairly tedious day's meals a much happier prospect.

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