It’s time to celebrate celery with a soothing soup, and a nice potato pancake to go with it

Most of the soup I make is in an effort to deal with my over-enthusiasm at the shops, a need to tidy up a vegetable rack overflowing with beetroot or leeks. A case of waste not, want not rather than to spotlight a vegetable in season. The results can be good or less so, depending on just how many turnips and swedes I am also trying to get rid of. This week, I made soup simply to celebrate a particularly fine head of celery.

I carried it home with my shopping, the celery’s plume of leaves poking pertly from my bag. The soup was good, using the entire head, or at least those stalks I hadn’t torn away and munched raw the moment I arrived home. The like-it-or-loathe-it vegetable was mellowed and sweetened by sour cream and potato.

A creamy, savoury gratin that’s so much more than the sum of its parts

A few years ago, my recipe tester Hannah rang me to rave about a celeriac and lentil gratin she’d made from Jenny Chandler’s book Pulse. I made it, then Hugh, my husband, made it, and then the friends we’d cooked it for also made it. Conclusion: people love it. Staring at a gnarly celeriac, some tins of tomatoes and lentils, plus a couple of handfuls of cashews, you’d never imagine they’d create something so moreish. But that’s the strength of great knowhow (Jenny’s) and the transformative power of time and heat on even the most simple of ingredients.