Simply Delicious Power Salad

Here are the Ingredients*: beet, celeriac, carrots, apple and raisins
For the dressing, just some olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice

Equipment:
Either a hand shredder/grater or a food processor. Use the shredder attachment. This is one of the most important attachments to my food processor. It's the only one I've ever had to replace. The last time it broke I ended up buying a new food processor in an outlet store for less money than the attachment would have cost me, if I had even found one. My food processor is very old.

Preparation:
1- Rinse all the vegetables.
2- I only peel the celeriac and beet.
3- Cut to the size that can easily be shredded.
4- Put all the shredded vegetables in a bowl.
5- Add raisins.
6- Pour olive oil over the ingredients.
7- Squeeze sliced lemons.
8- Let it sit for at least half and hour, on counter or table if you're serving it immediately, and in the refrigerator if the salad is for another time.
9- Stir before serving.

ENJOY!

Perfect healthy, colorful salad.
Easy to make

*Quantities are flexible, and you can add different dried fruit, canned pineapple, cabbage either red and/or green.

Variations are certainly permitted and encouraged. How did yours come out?

Perfect "Root Salad"

My husband makes the Chicken Soup, and one of his favorite ingredients is celeriac, but just the leaves.

That leaves us with the roots, which end up waiting in the bottom of the fridge for me to inspired and motivated. To be honest, those roots aren't very attractive, and you need a steady hand and sharp knife to get them in condition to be used as a food ingredient.

There are three basic things I do with them:

• cook them with other vegetables in the oven, not very popular
• grate/shred them for kugels, especially as a lower carb potato kugel
• shred to be used in a salad

This week I made a salad with them. I also shredded carrots and an apple in the food processor. For extra sweetness, I also threw in some dark raisins.  I used my usual salad dressing, olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. It was a great success and very popular with our guests.

A New Salad, A Variation From "The Modern Menu"

I'm not the type to follow recipes, certainly not exactly follow them, even when I try.  That's what happened when I decided to use up some celeriac, the big knobby celery roots that get stuck and ignored in the fridge.  My husband loves using the strongly flavored stalks in his chicken soup, and I'm stuck trying to find things to do with the roots.

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a very simple recipe for a salad in The Modern Menu by Kim Kushner, which I had gotten to review.  I don't know why, but even though it's called "Lemon Celery Root Salad with Walnuts" I decided that it needs raisins and bought those to use, not walnuts.  Otherwise, I pretty much followed the recipe, although I didn't add salt and pepper and since those celery roots are of various non-standard sizes, I didn't really measure the olive oil too exactly.  And of course I added lots of raisins. 

Here is Kushner's recipe and my illustrations:

Ingredients

1 celery root, rough outer skin discarded, root halved

Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup chopped walnuts, toasted

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

On the large holes of a box grater or in a food processor fitted with the grater disk, grate the celery root. Transfer to a medium serving bowl. Pour the lemon juice and olive oil over the celery root, add the walnuts, and season with the salt and pepper. Toss to thoroughly coat and serve.

Serves 4 to 6

I brought this salad to our annual Yom Ha'Atzma'ut barbeque at my cousin's and I then made another one which I brought to a neighbor on Shabbat.  The celeriac has a very delicate flavor when grated and eaten raw. 

I also added some leftover salad to my cooked chicken the other night, like a stir-fry, and it is also delicious cooked.  So, if you've made too much to eat and are afraid to keep it too long in the fridge, then sauté it.

Everyone who tasted it agrees that you can substitute or add all sorts of nuts, seeds or dried even fresh fruit to make this salad a totally fantastic one bowl meal. 

I'd like your comments about this recipe, thanks.

More Ways to Use Celeriac

Last week I subjected my husband, father and yours truly to another of my creative cooking solutions.  The object of my recent experiments is the rather repulsive looking celeriac, celery root, that ugly thing attached to the strong-tasting stalks my husband puts in the chicken soup he makes every week.

As you most certainly agree, they ought to be well-disguised.  Would you guess they can be found here?

I cut up a root, small pieces, along with the onion for this meatloaf.  In addition there's some tomato paste/concentrate, an egg, coarse garlic and some dehydrated parsley flakes sprinkled on top, and some ground meat (part poultry.)  No, no binder was used.  I've been doing my best to reduce or even eliminate carbohydrates from my diet.

My customers approved the experiment.  The flavor is so strong that you don't need salt.  Actually I don't cook foods like this with salt.  It's real easy to make.  You can even mix it in the baking dish to save on dishwashing.