Recipe for celery root pasta with chicken and celery root sauce
It’s been about a year since my husband first attended Gastronomisk Undergrund. He came home incredibly enthusiastic about a fantastic celery pasta tossed in a celery and cheese sauce. He said that the celery was exactly like “real” pasta.
We have previously made pasta from zucchini at home, and while it is a fine gluten-free alternative to regular pasta, it’s not quite the same as real pasta. So I knew that at some point I had to try making my own celery pasta.
And now the day has come! I always enjoy using celeriac but have never used it for pasta, so I was quite excited to see if it would work. It actually turned out to be pretty easy, and oh my, it was delicious!
Ingredients
Celery Pasta
- 1 Celery
- Water for blanching
- Salt for the water
Chicken
- 4 Chicken Breast
- 20 gram Butter
- Salt and Pepper freshly ground
- Flake Salt
Celery Sauce
- 0.5 Celery
- 1 Onion
- 1 clove Garlic
- Water
- Whipping Cream
- Whole Milk
- 40 gram Grated cheese mozzarella
- Salt freshly ground, to taste
- Pepper freshly ground, to taste
- Gastrique or sugar and vinegar
Instructions
Celery Root Sauce
- Clean and peel the celery root. Cut it in half and save one half for another time. If it's a small celery root, you can use the whole thing.
- Cut the celery root into small cubes.
- Finely chop the garlic and onion.
- Place the celery root, garlic, and onion in a pot with 1 part water, 1 part heavy cream, and 1 part whole milk. The vegetables should be covered.
- Let everything boil for 20 minutes until tender.
- Drain the liquid and save it in a container for later.
- Place the cooked vegetables in a blender with a little of the liquid (better to add too little than too much!). Add a little liquid at a time until it becomes a thick and smooth puree. You can also use an immersion blender if you don't have a regular blender.
- Season to taste with salt, pepper, and gastrique (or a mixture of vinegar and sugar).
- Find a new, clean pot and pour the puree into it along with grated cheese. Heat it through for a few minutes to melt the cheese.
- Take the chicken out of the refrigerator about 30 minutes before cooking. This helps prevent the chicken from releasing too much liquid and boiling instead of frying.
- Pat the chicken dry with a clean kitchen towel and season with freshly ground salt and pepper.
- Heat a pan over high heat (11/14 on my stove).
- Melt the butter in the pan.
- When the butter foams up, add the chicken to the pan.
- Fry the chicken on each side (first on one side, then on the other).
- Remove from the pan and sprinkle with a pinch of flaky salt.
- Clean and peel the celery root.
- Cut the root into slices as thin as possible. Stack some slices and cut them into approximately 0.5 cm wide strips to make pasta. Repeat with the remaining slices.
- Place the celery root pasta in a bowl of cold water.
- Bring water to a boil with a little salt.
- Add the celery root pasta and blanch for about 2 minutes. It should be al dente, meaning tender but with some bite.
- Drain the water and serve.
