Recipe: Sweet celery salad

At the weekend, my partner and I catered for a friend’s christening. We had the camera ready to fondly take pictures of our food, and exclaim over how great it all looked, but we seriously misjudged our timings. We didn’t have time to lift a camera, we barely had time to breathe – the evening before and the day were spent running (literally, running) around the kitchen and garden prepping and serving our fine food.

We made a sort of ‘umbrella’ plan, handing our pregnant and not-rich friend a list of ingredients to buy. She forgot to bring the list while shopping and ‘worked from memory’. Now she did well, but the catering turned into a let’s work with what we’ve got event, as opposed to a precision party. I’ll post up more recipes from the day (we did good!), but for now, here’s a celery salad that the christening crowd loved.

An hour before everyone arrived, I had a serious amount of celery and no clues about what to do with it. Desperation drove me to the following concoction, and it was a taste sensation. I had a good nosy in their store cupboard, and they had some excellent spices, plus apricots and pecans to hand.

Ingredients

A hell of a lot of celery (judge it yourself)

A half a bag of dried apricots

A large handful of raisins

A good scoop of pecan nuts

Heaped tsp of cumin

Heaped tsp of dried coriander

1 tbsp of sesame oil

For the dressing

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 tbsp of sesame oil

Method

Put the pecan nuts into the oven to roast for 15mins. Cut up the celery into attractive little 1cm pieces. In a pan, heat up the sesame oil, and throw in the raisins, cumin and coriander. Heat for a few minutes to release the aromas of those delightful spices, then throw it over the celery. Cut up the dried apricots, and put them in too. Chop the roasted pecans finely, then put them into your salad, along with the maple syrup and sesame oil dressing.

Watch this space for a luscious butterflied lamb recipe, a green bean zesty salad, pasta salads with a twist, some cunning cous cous and some seriously divine meatballs: all part of the christening fare. And post any lovely salad recipes you have!