Braised Celery

I needed to bring a vegetable to a pot luck and the most promising thing in my fridge was celery which isn’t the most obvious of candidates. But I found a bunch of celery-centered recipes on Food 52, including this one for braised celery which I didn’t follow (in part because I had it in my head that the recipe called for pecorino, not pancetta…) but I sort of used it to make this:

– Sauté shallot and onion (preferably red for the visual appeal) in olive oil until soft
– Peel the hard strings off a bunch of celery and cut it into pieces
– Add the celery to the pan, along with garlic, salt, and lemon juice and cover
– Let it cook for a while, until the celery is pretty soft (add water or some sort of liquid as needed so it doesn’t burn too much)
– Sprinkle with pepper (yes, Adrianne, I finally bought some!)
– Optional: cut up the leftover roasted eggplant from the eggs benedict and toss that in
– Serve!

This was pretty good. People who said they don’t generally like celery in things said they liked this, so that’s pretty cool.

Also, I would just like to point out that this is my 200th post on Chameleon Kitchen, which is quite exciting! And I wanted to say how much I appreciate your support and the fact that you are reading this right now – it means so much to me. Thank you all!!