Celery Salad (And The Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg)

If you read my blog at all regularly, you’ll know I don’t often post salads. I’ve dabbled here and there, but the truth is, I don’t really like salads. Especially ones with lettuce.

The Plenty More cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi is the cookbook that contains by far the most salads I’ve made and eaten (and liked!). This is one of those salads.

If you’re like me, you buy celery and use a couple of stalks to make a soup or a stuffing or something good and then you don’t know what to do with the remaining million stalks. Eating plain celery, to me, is one of the most depressing things. Sorry celery lovers!

This salad is now my go-to recipe to save me from leftover celery. It’s crunchy, green, bright, and contains no lettuce!

And it’s perfectly adaptable to help you get rid of other odds and ends from the fridge too. I’ve made it the way I wrote in the recipe below. But I’ve also skipped the capers (didn’t have any) and added some sliced green radish that I had lying around. I’ve replaced feta with goat cheese. I’ve used red or white onion, depending on which I had on hand. Skip the egg and cheese if you’re vegan. Do what you need to do.

And then feel healthy and congratulate yourself cause you ate salad.

Celery Salad (And The Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg)

Adapted from the Plenty More cookbook

8 stalks of celery, sliced thinly on the diagonal (keep the leaves if your celery has leaves. Include these too!)

2 green bell peppers, seeded and cut into thin strips

1/2 red or white onion, thinly sliced

2 green chili peppers (with or without seeds, your choice!), sliced into thin rings

2 lemons, segmented, fruit and juices reserved (if you don’t know how to segment citrus, check out my explanation here – and watch out for any cuts on your hands…)

1/2 cup parsley leaves

1 cup cilantro leaves

4 tbsp capers

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt, divided

2 tbsp olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup crumbled feta (or chunks of goat cheese)

Soft-boiled eggs (see instructions below)

Mix celery, green pepper, and onion with 1/2 tsp salt and let sit for 30 minutes until the veggies soften and start to let out some juices. These will form part of the “dressing”.

Add the chili peppers, lemon, parsley, cilantro, capers, and sugar. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Dole out onto plates and top with feta and a soft-boiled egg.

The perfect soft-boiled egg

There could be a whole blog post on this topic alone and people have written them. This is my favourite method to cook a perfectly runny soft-boiled egg.

Boil the water first with NO EGGS in it.

[If you add the eggs to the water right away, they may be in there for different amounts of time depending on how hot your water was to start, how big a pot you used, how many eggs you were boiling at once, etc. If you add the eggs to boiling water, you know it’s at 100C!]

Gently lower the eggs into the water using a spoon. The water should still be boiling.

Time 6.5 minutes.

Remove pot from heat, drain water, and rinse immediately with cold water to stop the cooking process. Peel and enjoy!