Those who know me know that I don’t like olives or cilantro. But there are also a few (a lot, my friend LKA would insist) other things I don’t like. First among these is celery. Let’s just say that regular celery is as unpleasant a prospect to me as the thought of vampire-enslaved zombie celery is to the highstrung cat Chester in the Bunnicula books.
While I will grudgingly dice a rib or two to make a mirepoix, I otherwise steer well clear of celery. And since discovering that Suzanne Goin, as revealed in her cookbook Sunday Suppers at Lucques, sometimes substitutes fennel for celery in a mirepoix, I have happily abandoned celery and its ribs all together.
Recently at a restaurant in Portland, the kind that only has two seatings a night and serves a six-course fixed menu, I was faced with an escarole salad that had celery in it. Maybe, I thought, escarole has some magical property that makes celery taste good.
It doesn’t.
So I ate the rest of the salad and left a neat pile of celery on the side of my plate. A perfectly logical course of action, except in the eyes of my fellow diners.
“You’re not eating your celery,” said G.
“I don’t like celery,” I said.
“How could you not like celery?” asked C.