Seitan in Celeriac Purée

File this one under intuitive cooking.

I’m trying to use up stuff that I have around the house before I go grocery shopping again. I have a bunch of different root vegetables that keep well, and among them was some celery root (celeriac). I really wanted something that could be poured over mashed potatoes last night. So, I stood in front of the fridge, figuring out what I had on hand. I came up with the celery root, some frozen seitan, and some frozen veggies. This is what it turned out to be. The seitan was ground up in the food processor before being added.

Mashed potatoes, ground seitan, celery root purée, golden zucchini and green beans. Weird combination, but it works!

I looked for celery root (celeriac) purée recipes, but didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I don’t think that spreading the purée on the plate would have been all that attractive with mashed potatoes, plus I wanted something smother-worthy, so it’s used like a gravy, although it’s not really a gravy, either. But is was interesting!

Are you wondering what celery root is? It’s exactly what it sounds like. It smells like the more traditional celery, but it tastes much milder, and there’s none of that stringy stuff.

This purée is gluten-free, and the entire meal can early be made gluten free by using tempeh or tofu instead of seitan.

Since this is intuitive cooking, I’m not giving amounts- use what you have on hand. I’ll explain.

Celeriac Purée

• celery root, chopped
• onion, minced
• garlic, minced
• water/veggie broth
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Spray a pot with oil (or heat a small amount of broth/water with which to sauté).
2. Sauté onion until brow; add celery root and continue to sauté. Add garlic as celery root begins to soften.
3. Add enough water/broth to cover veggies. Cook until celery root is fork-tender.
4. With an immersion blender, blend all until a purée consistency. Taste for seasoning. You can add anything like seitan, tofu, tempeh or veggies at this point, if you like.

This whole intuitive thing is about using whatever you have on hand rather than an actual recipe. I had a little more than 1/2 of a celery root, and used a lot of onion, because I like it. I used about 3 cups of broth, but I might use slightly less in the future.