Nothing brightens up a crummy winter’s day like this lemon
and celery salad.
Way back in December, I got the new Canal House cookbook, Canal House Cooks Every Day, by
Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton (sister of Gabrielle Hamilton).
The first thing I made was this meal: grilled beef with parsley-tarragon butter
and a chopped celery salad. Preserved lemons in the celery really shines,
especially when it’s grey and wet out there.
The celery I used was the very most tender—the pale ribs in
the centre—along with all of their leaves. Finely chopped anchovies and
preserved lemon were tossed along with a lemon and olive oil dressing. The
result is spectacularly sharp and alive. It’s best served cold.
As for the steak and butter, I never bothered with the
tarragon. Just plain parsley was beautiful on its own. I like my meat grilled rare;
in my inaccurate and kind of cartoony understanding of how biology works, my
body yells “hurray!” as soon as the bloody steak hits my stomach and those
proteins get cracking. Please don’t
quote me on this.
For no reason at all, here is Olive the cat. I’m not sure
what she was doing on the table (not allowed!). She doesn’t care for lemons. Actually, she doesn't even know what they are.
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