Celery Soup...
Celery Soup...
It Must be Christmas
Celery Soup...
Celery Soup...
It Must be Christmas
Graham Carlisle is a Friend of the Whitworth, a TV scriptwriter, a playwright and he has also written two cook books. As you will see, he is a great story teller too. Here he tells the tale of the celery soup.
Celery: Illustration by Anne Mackinnon
"Whenever I smell celery it takes me back to Xmas as a child. This is because my family used to sell celery on the market. Not just the weedy little sticks of celery you get in supermarkets now but plants made up of massive gleaming white bundles of sticks. These were spotless and radiated the smell of celery for several yards.
My Dad regarded this as a marketing ploy. He thought that any housewife passing the stall would start thinking celery from some distance away because of the smell and when she reached the stall would be unable to resist purchasing at least one stick. He did the same thing with tomatoes. He used to twist the tomato stem just enough to release the smell of tomato without it coming off. But for me his marketing masterpiece was the fresh farm eggs. He had a bale of straw and once he’d arranged the eggs on the stall he would scatter bits of straw on them and stick bits of straw in the band of his trilby. He became the newly arrived farmer straight from the farm.
The housewives didn’t know that the reason the celery were spotless was that it was my job to scrub them spotless with an old fashioned scrubbing brush. There was no running water on the stall, just two metal water barrels full of not very clean water, which was changed every few weeks.
In the depths of winter the water would freeze. We would arrive at the stall at six a.m. and I would break the ice before unloading the celery and starting to scrub. My hands would quickly go blue and lose any feeling.
My Dad never did any scrubbing. He always delegated the job to me as though it was an honour. There was no point complaining as Dad had an unusual hearing defect which meant he was unable to hear complaints. The stall was very busy. Once my sister and I demanded a dinner hour as we were normally expected to keep serving on the stall at the same time as eating a fish and chip barm cake. We stood in trepidation awaiting his reply. I thought my dad was having a heart attack. He staggered backwards, slowly got his breath and finally announced “Where do you think this is? Marks And Spencers?”, before staggering off shaking his head in wonderment.
The smell of celery now takes me back to the market. Like Pavlov’s dog. And one thing I still love is celery soup. Looking back now I realise that we ate so much of it because we already had the ingredients. It was the same with tomatoes. My mother made a wonderful sauce by simply throwing all the left over unsold tomatoes into a pan and cooking them down. This is such a fresh and tasty sauce that I could have easily got a regular column in the Observer on the strength of it. For now let’s start with Celery Soup. So easy. To serve it, just sprinkle a few croutons on the soup. Add a swirl of cream and some finely chopped parsley and that’s it. Splendid!
Celery Soup
1 head of celery
2oz of butter
1 potato
Salt and Pepper and cream
1 litre of chicken stock or vegetable stock or water
Method
Chop the celery and sweat it in 1oz of the butter until soft
Chop and add the potato together with salt and pepper
Add the stock. Simmer for 30 minutes
Liquidise it. If you liquidise the soup well you won’t need to sieve it
Whisk in the rest of the butter. Add croutons and cream and parsley to garnish."
Graham Carlisle is a Friend of the Whitworth, a TV scriptwriter, a playwright and he has also written two cook books. As you will see, he is a great story teller too. Here he tells the tale of the celery soup.
Celery: Illustration by Anne Mackinnon
"Whenever I smell celery it takes me back to Xmas as a child. This is because my family used to sell celery on the market. Not just the weedy little sticks of celery you get in supermarkets now but plants made up of massive gleaming white bundles of sticks. These were spotless and radiated the smell of celery for several yards.
My Dad regarded this as a marketing ploy. He thought that any housewife passing the stall would start thinking celery from some distance away because of the smell and when she reached the stall would be unable to resist purchasing at least one stick. He did the same thing with tomatoes. He used to twist the tomato stem just enough to release the smell of tomato without it coming off. But for me his marketing masterpiece was the fresh farm eggs. He had a bale of straw and once he’d arranged the eggs on the stall he would scatter bits of straw on them and stick bits of straw in the band of his trilby. He became the newly arrived farmer straight from the farm.
The housewives didn’t know that the reason the celery were spotless was that it was my job to scrub them spotless with an old fashioned scrubbing brush. There was no running water on the stall, just two metal water barrels full of not very clean water, which was changed every few weeks.
In the depths of winter the water would freeze. We would arrive at the stall at six a.m. and I would break the ice before unloading the celery and starting to scrub. My hands would quickly go blue and lose any feeling.
My Dad never did any scrubbing. He always delegated the job to me as though it was an honour. There was no point complaining as Dad had an unusual hearing defect which meant he was unable to hear complaints. The stall was very busy. Once my sister and I demanded a dinner hour as we were normally expected to keep serving on the stall at the same time as eating a fish and chip barm cake. We stood in trepidation awaiting his reply. I thought my dad was having a heart attack. He staggered backwards, slowly got his breath and finally announced “Where do you think this is? Marks And Spencers?”, before staggering off shaking his head in wonderment.
The smell of celery now takes me back to the market. Like Pavlov’s dog. And one thing I still love is celery soup. Looking back now I realise that we ate so much of it because we already had the ingredients. It was the same with tomatoes. My mother made a wonderful sauce by simply throwing all the left over unsold tomatoes into a pan and cooking them down. This is such a fresh and tasty sauce that I could have easily got a regular column in the Observer on the strength of it. For now let’s start with Celery Soup. So easy. To serve it, just sprinkle a few croutons on the soup. Add a swirl of cream and some finely chopped parsley and that’s it. Splendid!
Celery Soup
1 head of celery
2oz of butter
1 potato
Salt and Pepper and cream
1 litre of chicken stock or vegetable stock or water
Method
Chop the celery and sweat it in 1oz of the butter until soft
Chop and add the potato together with salt and pepper
Add the stock. Simmer for 30 minutes
Liquidise it. If you liquidise the soup well you won’t need to sieve it
Whisk in the rest of the butter. Add croutons and cream and parsley to garnish."
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