Céleri rémoulade salad — the real thing

Yesterday Walt posted a topic about a salad of grated celery root (a.k.a. celeriac) in a white dressing that we served the other day with strips of smoked salmon and some black olives. The salad, called céleri rémoulade in France, is delicious. In a way, it is a French version of cole slaw.

If you've traveled to and around France, you've probably seen the white céleri rémoulade salad in charcuterie shops — French-style delicatessens — as well as in restaurants and cafés, and even in the supermarkets. It is very much a standard item, along with salads of grated carrots and diced cooked beets in vinaigrette. The problem with the supermarket versions is that the dressing is often too sweet.

Celery root, a.k.a. celeriac — céleri-rave in French

There are many recipes for céleri rémoulade, and I've been looking at them again over the past few hours, both in French and in English. I've looked in cookbooks, and I've looked at recipes on the Internet. Most of the recipes are glaringly incomplete, or call for ingredients like hard-boiled egg, capers, cornichons, and Roquefort cheese that you would never find in céleri rémoulade in the French deli version. Even the standard French cookbooks and Julia Child give recipes that are slightly off, in my opinion. Most use just mayonnaise as the dressing, or an emulsion of mustard and oil without any egg.

I found an interesting discussion from 2008 on an Internet forum at Supertoinette, which is a French site for home cooks. On the forum, somebody wrote in and asked for a recipe for céleri rémoulade that would produce a result like the salad she buys in the shops. The next person said that after trying many recipes, she had never found a version of the dressing that was as white as the sauce the professionals made to dress the grated celery root.

Celery-root salad is good garnished with green or black olives

Somebody suggested beating some water into home-made mayonnaise to lighten its consistency and color. I've tried that myself, with mixed results. That kind of mayonnaise makes a good dressing for potato salad, for example. Somebody else on the Supertoinette forum said the professionals must have a « truc » — a trick or secret — for making the white celery-root salad dressing, and she hoped to find out what it might be.

And then a woman who calls herself « P'tite maman » on the Supertoinette forum gives the answer. She says: "I knew a charcutier who gave me his recipe for the céleri rémoulade dressing. It nothing more and nothing less than a good mayonnaise into which you incorporate some crème fraîche. That gives the dressing a white color and makes it lighter, easier to digest."

It's also good with lettuce and with smoked salmon.

That's what Walt and I do now, and it's as good as what we get from the local charcutiers and better than what we've bought at the supermarket. The dressing is approximately half mayonnaise — home-made is better, because it doesn't contain sugar or other sweeteners — and half cream — French crème fraîche is what would be used here, but I bet American sour cream would be good too. Or you could put in a combination of plain yogurt and whipping cream. You'd have to experiment with that. Mayonnaise alone is not as good. Nor is cream alone.

And don't forget the mustard. Mayonnaise as made in France already has some mustard in it, and that would be Dijon mustard. But the celery-root salad needs more. For half a cup of mayonnaise and half a cup of cream, add a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, and some salt and pepper of course. That should dress about a pound of celery.

As for the celery root, peel it to remove the layer of bumpy skin completely, and then grate it finely. Raw, of course. Walt grates it in the food processor using a blade that grates vegetables finely, and that goes really fast. The salad is better if you put it together and let it "marinate" in the refrigerator for a few hours before you eat it. The dressing "cooks" and tenderizes the grated celery root that way and gives it a nice texture.

I think you can find celery root in the U.S. these days. It's also good cooked like boiled potatoes, or cooked and mashed with an equal weight of boiled potatoes to make a nice purée. Try it.

Winter again

In December, we had autumn weather at the beginning, winter weather in the middle, and then spring weather toward the end. We even had a taste of summer, looking at blogs like Leon and Sue's Melbourne — our home.

So now, what season is it? Winter has come roaring back. You'll tell me that isn't surprising when the date is January 3. But my head is spinning. And I'm shivering.

I like these old-fashioned logos on French shopping bags
and the papers meat and cheeses are wrapped in.

I'll tell you something I think is strange. It's snowing to the south of us. They're predicting several inches of snow in places like the Dordogne, the Charente, and the Limousin — all more southern than Saint-Aignan. Here in the Loire Valley, it's cold but we aren't expecting snow.

I have very little experience of living in a place where it snows to the south. It didn't happen that way in North Carolina or California. It takes some getting used to. I know it has to do, at least partly, with altitude and elevation. Still, it seems strange.

Maybe I'm jealous. A good snowfall would make winter at least picturesque.

The second day of 2010

Yesterday the weather changed again. We had snow flurries for several hours in the morning, and it had just started sticking to the grass, hedges, trees, and rooftops when it suddenly ended. Then the temperature started falling, and the afternoon was cold and gray.

Deer grazing in a field near the river, down at the bottom
of our road on Christmas Eve 2009

New friends of ours from northern England, Jean and Nick, came over with their poodle Lulu to spend the afternoon and eat our New Year's dinner of cassoulet with us. They have a holiday home in the little town called Le Grand-Pressigny, about an hour southwest of Saint-Aignan. And they have a blog: A Very Grand Pressigny. Lulu the poodle, by the way, is a big dog — she's a lot taller than Callie.

A quince still hanging on the tree at the edge of the
vineyard after our mid-December snow and cold

Today we are planning to have lunch in a restaurant with a group of young Americans who live in Paris and are spending the New Year's holiday near Blois. Several of them have blogs too, but we aren't even sure who all is in the group. We'll drive up toward Blois at noontime to meet up with them.

Apples, always apples, composting in our back garden

Such is the life here in Saint-Aignan. With blogs nowadays, we know many people we would never have met or even heard of back in those pre-Internet and pre-blog days. And we keep meeting more and more bloggers. Not just Americans, either, but people from England, Canada, Belgium, and Australia.

A Callie's-eye view of the vines through the back fence

There is certainly no sense of isolation out here in the French countryside. By the way, I did an e-mail interview for a blog called A Taste of Garlic. The author, Keith Eckstein, has interviewed a lot of bloggers in France. If you are looking for more blogs about the expat life in France, Keith's blog is the place to find them.

The glassy pond out back and its wintery reflections —
that's mistletoe growing in an old apple tree

The pictures here are ones I took around the yard and vineyard over the past 10 days or so.

Bonne année, et surtout bonne santé

Now I can say it — Happy New Year. And above all, good health.

That's what people say to me in Saint-Aignan. And they never say it before January 1. Somehow, saying Happy New Year before the new year has arrived is seen as jumping the gun. It's what you would call a superstition, I guess.

Yesterday New Year's Eve food: fresh oysters from

Marenne d'Oléron down on the Atlantic coast

We've been busy getting ready for our New Year's Day meal, which is a cassoulet. That's a southwestern France dish of white beans with duck or goose, pork sausages, and sometimes lamb and fresh pork too. My version this year is duck legs, Toulouse sausages, and big white lima beans.

Giant white lima beans for today's cassoulet

Since we don't have the standard French New Year's Eve dinner, which often lasts into the wee hours, we can deal with a meal as heavy as beans, poultry, and pork on New Year's Day. But I think we are out of the mainstream. Many people around France are spending the day recovering after last night's feast and festivities.

For apéritif snacking before dinner today, pitted prunes wrapped
in smoked meats — thin-sliced duck breast above, bacon below

Of course, what is the mainstream in France? People here have told me, often emphatically, that France is a country of individuals, not groups. Be yourself. Don't follow the crowd. Don't stand in line but rush the door. Dress the way you want. Don't be afraid to be different. Chacun pour soi !

Here's that thin-sliced smoked duck breast. This is what
I mean about living out in the country but
having all the conveniences.

Uh-oh. I got carried away. Whatever. There's an element of truth in that insistence on individualism. That's why I'm here. Plus the food. And the quiet rural life in a place with all the conveniences of modern times.

I hope that you are happy where you are and that you will have a happy and healthy 2010.