Braised and Gratineed Celery stalks with Parmesan Cheese
Wow. They way Jerry and I split up our recipes, I haven’t posted since Christmas! It seems like a LONG time!
When I first read this recipe, I thought, “CELERY? REALLY?” It’s not that I have anything against celery. In fact I use it all the time in soups, stews, along with onion and carrots in sauces, and of course raw in salads. I just never thought about serving celery as its own vegetable side dish for dinner. Oh, what a wonderful surprise!
Celery stalks are cleaned and blanched. Then they are tossed in a sauce of butter, garlic and pancetta or prosciutto and cooked. Broth is added, and celery is cooked until tender and liquid is boiled away. The celery is moved to a baking dish and topped with the onion-prosciutto mixture.
Then the celery is topped parmesan cheese and baked until the cheese melts into a delicious crust. It is WONDERFUL, and I will definitely make it again. Brad LOVED it!
Celery! Who knew? Obviously Marcella did!
YUM – this looks wonderful . . . mind you, how could it not be great with those ingredients?
That looks so good and it’s another one of those recipes I haven’t made although I’ve had the book plus the two that preceded it for quite some time. I know what I’ll be making this next week!
I have never tried this, although with your enthusiastic report Palma, I will now!
We just got back from 3 weeks in Venice and Bologna and we continually commented on how flavorful the celery was there. Maybe I can find a farmer at our local farmer’s market who produces a more flavorful celery!
When I am gone, one of my publishers should collect all the vegetable recipes in my books and gather them under one set of covers. Ditto for the seafood. No other cuisine, certainly not the French, and not even the Chinese can match the Italian for the flavor and diversity and simplicity of preparation of its veggies.