No this is not the eventual descent into madness caused by high exposure to Night Garden with the children. This is about two parents getting a rare escape for a night away.
Saturday night was spent over at Sat Bains in Nottingham. Apparently this was for relaxation, but there is always a part of my mind that works as a radar for new ideas. It was a very relaxing evening though and an experience we cannot wait to repeat. One of the many excellent dishes used celeriac and I got to thinking how I could take this as inspiration. So on the way home I picked up a celeriac and tried a few different techniques out. The one that realy stuck was a pickle.
Basically, very thinly sliced squares of celeriac are put in a vacuum bag along with a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and some matchsticks of fresh ginger. The bag is then evacuated of all air by the vacuum packer. This is left in the fridge for a couple of hours. The result is that the vinegar has been pushed into the celeriac except where the ginger was covering it. What was left was a very crunchy pickle with stripes across. The flavour of both the ginger and balsamic where each there in their own right.
So what next? If this is cut into wider matchsticks, it will be perfect as a home made pickle for use in the next smoked salmon sushi demo. Another experiment coming soon is the creation of aged vinegar …
