The cupboard is almost bare. I am down to the long-life fruit and vegetables. The ones that won’t quit. The stalks of celery, bought to accompany cheese, that were never eaten. The fennel, still crisp as ice, that failed to make it into the planned winter-leaf salad and the apples that seem to breed in the fridge. There’s also a brown paper bag of beetroots — isn’t there always? — that I really should bake or grate or pickle or compost.
Some winter vegetables are a pleasure to use up (savoy cabbage, Jerusalem artichokes, purple sprouting). Others are a challenge. Among the pushovers to repurpose, red cabbage can be baked with apples, bacon and redcurrant jelly; parsnips will be perfect for a spicy soup made with chicken stock and curry spices. Celeriac responds to being baked slowly until soft as butter, finished with a crust of breadcrumbs, parsley and lemon zest and served with a mustardy cream sauce. If that doesn’t appeal, feel free to use it as a doorstop.
But then, there are some whose road to deliciousness may be less obvious. Especially if they aren’t to end their days as fodder for the stock pot. The celery is too limp to scoop up Stilton. The fennel is still good enough for a salad, but there is little with which to partner it. Both of these roast splendidly, their flesh softening, their mineral notes mellowing, and will be good enough to eat as a principal dish if you give them time and season them imaginatively. A cushion of steamed brown rice will be a welcome accompaniment, or possibly couscous.
There is a little citrus left, mostly clementines and the odd large orange, still full of juice. The zest and juice can be used with roast vegetables. There are apples by the bagful. Some will be peeled, chopped and stewed to eat with deep garnet-red pomegranate seeds and yoghurt for breakfast. Others will be baked and served with marmalade sauce (a real cheat-treat made by melting half a jar’s worth with a couple of splashes of brandy and a pinch of grated ginger root).
The fatter, more majestic of the apples will be baked until they puff like meringues, their snow-white flesh frothing at the brim, and served with vanilla ice-cream rippled through with fruit mince.
Roast fennel and celery with yoghurt and honey
Serves 4. Ready in just over 1 hour.
The faint bitterness of celery mellows once the stalks are in the oven. As they roast they sweeten, their texture changes from crisp to silky and their salty, mineral notes soften. Caramelisation enhances celery’s sweetness, as does seasoning with a trickle of honey or maple syrup.
I appreciate fennel’s crisp, clean notes in a salad but it also wins me over when roasted and the strident aniseed notes soften.
Roast both celery and fennel like you mean it, until the cut edges colour to a rich gold, the ribs of celery become almost translucent and the fennel is soft to the fork. This can take an hour or so, but is worth it. I serve the two, roasted together, with cold yoghurt and hot, chilli and citrus-spiked honey.
1 large head of celery (about 750g)
700g fennel
4 Tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp chilli flakes
1 lemon
3 smoked garlic cloves, peeled
4 Tbsp honey
2 clementines (or 1 small orange)
200ml natural yoghurt
Method
Heat the oven to 200degC.
Prepare the celery by snipping off and reserving the leaves and trimming the root end. Cut the head in half top to bottom, then cut each half into 3 lengths. The lower sections will stay intact, the tops of the stalks will separate. Rinse thoroughly in cold water, shake dry, then put them cut-side-down in a roasting tin.
Remove and reserve any fronds from the fennel, then slice the heads in two from stalk to root. Cut each half into three or four thick wedges, then place on top of the celery in the roasting tin. Pour in the oil, then season with 1 tsp of chilli flakes, salt and coarsely ground black pepper.
Finely grate the lemon and add to the celery and fennel, then cut the lemon in half and squeeze in the juice. Tuck the smoked garlic cloves among the fennel and celery. Toss everything together so the vegetables are coated with the oil, juice and aromatics. Roast in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, then turn the celery and fennel over with kitchen tongs and continue roasting for a further 20-25 minutes. The vegetables are ready when golden and sticky and the point of a kitchen knife slides easily through.
Remove the roasting tin from the oven and transfer the vegetables to a serving dish. Warm the honey in the empty tin over a moderate heat with the remaining chilli flakes. Grate in the zest of the clementines or orange, then squeeze in the juice. Let the honey, chilli, zest and juice bubble until it starts to thicken.
Spoon the yoghurt over the celery and fennel, pour over the hot honey and scatter with the fennel fronds and celery leaves.
Baked apples with fruit mince ice-cream
Serves 4. Ready in 1 hour.
This is an unusual twist on a favourite traditional pudding.
Set the oven at 200degC. Using a corer, remove the cores from each of 4 large cooking apples or 8 dessert varieties. (The time your apples take to bake will depend on the variety. The quickest to cook will be the big frothy bramley type, the cooking varieties, as they are known.)
Halfway down each fruit, score a line through the skin all the way round each apple. This will allow the flesh to expand while keeping the fruit in one piece.
Place the apples in a baking dish or roasting tin so they are just nudging one another. Bake for about 45 minutes until the flesh is soft right through to the middle (test with a skewer). Allow more time for very large apples, less for smaller ones: dessert apples can take as little as 30 minutes.
Take 500ml of vanilla ice-cream from the freezer and let it soften (just don’t let it melt).
In a small pan, warm 250g of fruit mince until it is almost liquid and starts to bubble, then remove and allow it to cool a little.
Tip the softened ice-cream into a bowl, then spoon in the slightly warm mincemeat. Mix together gently and briefly, just enough for the ice-cream to be marbled with the mincemeat. Place it back in the freezer until the apples are ready.
Once the apples are soft and puffed up, and their skin is lightly scorched, divide them between four bowls, and top with spoonfuls of the fruit mince ice-cream.
• If you can’t get hold of fruit mince or you’re not a fan, this treatment works well with marmalade, too. — The Observer
