Friday, January 14, 2011

Plant ID-ing my food

I know. Super nerdy. But what's an off-season gardener to do??
Everything on the cutting board there belongs to the plant family Apiaceae, which is the same family as our dearly beloved carrot. The reason I care, or know, or either/both, is because I have become recently acquainted with celery root/celeriac (the brown knobby-looking thing, and the white peeled-looking thing) due to a recent foray into Indian vegetarian cooking.
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Indian vegetarian cooking requires more celery root than I've ever required in my life (that would be "none") so I'm happy to discover celeriac is just a variety of celery with a knobby edible root, commonly available in the produce section of most grocery stores. Who knew. So far, I've stir-fried it in curry and am about to pound it into koftas in curry.
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I do love curry, which is why I've also become acquainted with coriander--the two spice bottles (seeds and ground seeds) on the right and the green bundle of cilantro, a sneaky Spanish name for coriander leaves--all the same plant.
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And the last Apiaceae items on the cutting board are the white Florence fennel stalk next to a bottle of fennel seeds--both a lovely refreshing licorice flavour and by fluke, in my current food collection and related (like cousins) to knobby old celeriac. They all have edible roots (even coriander), highly fragrant leaves (even carrots), and tall umbrella-like flowers that produce flavourful seeds (even celery).
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This was brought to you by the Super Nerdy Horticulinary Network. You know you love it.

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