Celery root, ratatouille and me

As usual, I expect to be at the farmers market in Rockville Centre next Sunday morning and every Sunday morning until nearly Christmas, looking for something fresh and different. With 25 or so vendors offering pickles, jams, cheeses, pies, pasta, doughnuts, honey, empanadas, meats, fish, fruit, vegetables, breads and more, I have much to choose from.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been the cook in our house, and no, that doesn’t mean we have spaghetti four nights a week. On Sundays, I occasionally buy bread or fruit, but my favorite stop is at the vegetable stand run by the folks at Fred Terry and Son Farms, who bring their produce all the way from Orient, out on the North Fork.

I specialize in picking out vegetables I know nothing about, the stranger-looking the better. Celery root fits that description. It’s a greyish-brown ball with shriveled roots clinging to its bottom. Or is that its top? In any case, it’s a challenge to peel, and the wise would watch their fingers while doing this. They’re good roasted — the celery roots, not the fingers.

My first try at roasting celery root didn’t come out of the oven looking anything like the picture on the internet. Most of the time, I’ve cut celery root into cubes, combined it with carrots and put the combination through the torture of a hand blender (a poorly named device) and ended up with a surprisingly tasty soup.

One summer, I spotted a small, round vegetable that I thought might be a white radish, so I bought a bunch and sliced them into a salad. Usually, the vegetables have signs over them identifying what they are, but not this time. I asked Ethel Terry, one of the Terry farmers, what I was buying. Summer turnips, she said, delicious raw or cooked.

I’ve also been known to bring home white carrots, orange beets (and even a few red ones) and all kinds of beans and peas I’ve never cooked before. I count on Google to tell me how to fix them. I should make notes about the beans and peas I’ve tried and liked, but I don’t. The advantage of being lazy and disorganized, I guess, is two months after I first cook a different bean or pea I get to discover it all over again. At the moment, I’m researching how to clean and cook pearl onions. Wish me luck.

I buy a lot of eggplant from the Terry Farm people and have used it so often in ratatouille I can now spell “ratatouille” without looking it up. My fondness for this dish, though, is not shared by my wife, Irene.

When I return home after these visits, Irene always asks, excitement in her voice, “What’d you get?” Let’s face it: After 64 years of marriage, there’s not much I do that she still finds exciting. For this enthusiasm, though, I thank the farmers market.

 Reader Larry McCoy lives in Rockville Centre.