Austro-German Fried Celery Root (Celeriac)

While my recipe below varies a little from the recipe in this book, it was this book, which I've owned for quite a number of years, that gave me the idea to try a recipe for fried celery root, with such recipes not being uncommon in Germany and Austria (maybe Switzerland?). I'm not sure if the book is even available anymore, either in English or in the original German, but if you get a copy, be sure to eat first; otherwise, you'll want to fix every recipe in the book just from seeing the wonderful photographs. "Austria, a culinary tour," by Gerda Rob, translated from German to English by Guthrie Thomson, with photos by Hans Joachim Döbbelin. Sigloch Edition 1994, printed in Immenstadt, Germany, bookbinding in Künzelsau, Germany.

In German, there is no one name for fried celery root. German for celery root/celeriac is properly "Knollensellerie," but in certain contexts you might just see "Sellerie," or other forms like "Zeller," "Wurzelsellerie," or even "Sellerieknolle" (see Word History, below).

Serve with tartar sauce*or ranch dressing,** along with ham, sausages or smoked pork shoulder; that is, cottage ham, and in German "Geräucherte Schweineschulter." ***

Ingredients:

2 celery roots (baseball size), peeled and sliced into about 1/2 inch thick slices
3 tablespoons lemon juice 
1 to 1 1/4 cup flour (divided use)
1/4 cup bread crumbs (I prefer fine breadcrumbs with this, not panko)
2 eggs
1/3 to 2/3 cup white wine
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper 
1/2 teaspoon salt
olive oil for frying

After peeling and slicing the celery root, sprinkle the slices with the lemon juice. Heat enough water in a pan/pot to cover the celery root slices (be sure to pour in the lemon juice from the slices too). Add about a tablespoon of salt and and bring the water to a boil. Simmer the celery root slices until just tender, drain them. Dust the slices on both sides with a little flour. Mix together 3/4 cup flour, breadcrumbs, eggs, pepper, salt, and 1/3 cup white wine to make a batter (if too thick, add a little more white wine). Dip the flour dusted celery root slices into the batter. Fry the slices in preheated regular olive oil until golden brown. I use a skillet, but if you have a deep fryer, great! Drain the fried slices on paper towels and sprinkle with salt to taste. 

* To make your own tartar sauce, here is the link to the recipe:
https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/09/homemade-tartar-sauce.html

** To make your own ranch dressing, here is the link to the recipe:
https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/06/homemade-ranch-dressing.html 

*** The German word and food product "Katenschinken" is literally the equivalent to English "Cottage Ham," with "Katen" the close relative of English "cott," and "Schinken" the close relative of English "shank;" thus "ham." Cottage hams come from the pork shoulder of the front leg of the pig, while German Katenschinken are from the rear leg of the pig. Katenschinken are a specialty ham product of Holstein in northern Germany, where the small smokehouses were dubbed "Katen" (pronounced much like English "cotton"); the true meaning of which is, like its English cousin, "a small house in the countryside."
 
In this case, I had the Fried Celery Root with ranch dressing and knockwurst ...

WORD HISTORY:
Knoll-This word is related to  "knot," a word from the Germanic roots of English, and to "gnocchi," a word borrowed by English from Italian, which had gotten it from Lombardic, a Germanic dialect/language. It goes back to an Indo European form of, "gn/kn/gen/ken," which had the notion of "press, pinch into a compressed form or a ball." This gave Germanic a form of (perhaps?) "knuðla" (=knuthla), meaning, "clump, clod, lump." This gave Old English "cnoll," meaning "a hilltop, a mound." The spelling then changed to "knoll." Its German relative is "Knolle," and interestingly, while English speakers saw the "clump, lump" as being on top of the Earth's surface, German speakers saw it as being being below the Earth's surface; that is, "bulbous plant root, tuber." Low German has both "Knüll" (small hill) and "Knoll" (plant root, tuber), Dutch has "knol" (tuber), Old Norse had "knollr" (mountain top, hilltop), but it's unclear to me how, or even if, the word continued into the modern North Germanic languages from Old Norse or was borrowed from other Germanic languages; for instance, Danish uses "knold" for "tuber," and indeed, "knoldselleri" means "celery root," and Swedish has "knöl" (tuber, lump, knob). In American English especially, "knoll" has featured prominently and controversially in the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 in Dallas, Texas, as an area called "the grassy knoll" was a possible site of a shot or shots fired at the president.