Coq Au Vin with a Carrot and Celery Root Puree

This was fancy-shmancy. Maybe too fancy for a Monday night dinner. Its one of those that meals that makes your spouse hesitantly ask, "What's the occasion?"

Fortunately, I was just having a recipe testing night. Now, in my house, that brings a whole new hesitancy to the table. I'm not saying we flop recipes often. But when we do, its bad. Real bad. And that's the honest truth- usually only Justin and McDonald's know when it has happened.

Luckily, this puree was awesome! It seems like having a puree is a new food trend. We ate at Ocean Zen recently where I ordered a dish that had a sweet potato "puree". It was painted onto a huge rectangular dish to make a dramatic presentation. And I've seen about 100 Food Network shows that are making purees as a side dish.

So here I am joining the bandwagon with the super-fancy, super-trendy puree shmear- all on a Monday night. Okay so I didn't shmear this plate, but I totally could have. I could have whipped out my Iron Chef mad skills on you all, but I chose to refrain and let the puree speak for itself.

Isn't it pretty? I love the orange color.



The Carrot and Celery Root puree is a recipe from Claire Robinson's show 5 ingredient fix. She paired it with a Coq Au Vin and since I salivated the entire show, I thought we'd give the whole gig a shot.

Plus, they just happened to have some celery root at our CSA pick-up and I promised to post a recipe when I found a keeper!

A celery root or celeriac looks like this:



Its ugly. But its delicious. I've gone an entire quarter-century without knowing this vegetable existed. But all the food network chefs have been cooking with them this fall, and all of the sudden- there they are on the produce isle. They've likely been there all along, I just averted my eyes to the pretty vegetables and ignored them.

And for this I am dearly sorry. I've been ignoring a surprisingly delicious vegetable just because it was ugly.

This reminds me of a lesson I learned from the ugly dolls. Just because they are ugly doesn't mean they don't have a sweet personality. My sister in-law loves to get the kiddos ugly dolls. And the kids love them too.

Don't you love/hate this horrible analogy to celery root? Here, it gets even worse. If celery root were an ugly doll, he would look like this:



But his personality is so rich, and deep. The official Ugly Doll site says this about him:
Tray is the brain of the bunch. Not because she is smart, but
because she has three brains.....one in each lump, or one per
eye, as Babo likes to point out. Tray is also the hungriest of all
the Uglydolls, and has a desperate need for Blueberry Pie. Some
say her eyes are blue because of her craving for it.

Tray often combines her hunger for pie with her brainpower to talk Babo into
getting food for her. Unfortunately, Babo usually brings back a branch,
a rock, or something even less tasty. If you want to make Tray extra
happy, sit her next to you in the subway, or in your car. It makes her
feel important.

Well, we didn't finish the dinner with blueberry pie, but I thought Tray was cute for such an ugly doll.

Okay, all ready. Enough rambling, where's the recipe!!!

Carrot Celery Root Puree

2 T. butter
1 small yellow onion
1 clove garlic, minced
4 medium carrots, cut into 1 inch chunks
1 celery root, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
2 cups chicken stock

Melt butter in saucepan, add onions and cook until tender. Add carrots, celery root and garlic- saute for 1-2 minutes. Add salt and pepper. Then add 2 cups warm chicken stock- just enough to barely cover the vegetables. Bring to a simmer, cover and let cook for about 25-30 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

Drain the vegetables over a bowl, reserving drained stock. Transfer veggies to a food processor and puree until smooth- adding reserved liquid to reach the right consistency. Season again if needed and serve warm!

The Coq Au Vin recipe is long (but simple!) so here's a link. This is a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. I didn't follow it exactly because I wanted to use ingredients I already had, but it was fantastic! Its basically chicken braised in red wine (with bacon!) served with seared onions and mushrooms in a wine reduction sauce. Like I said, sounds fancy- but it was easy!