Nigel Slater’s recipes for celery soup with thyme and parsley, and potato pancakes

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.

For all the big flavoured soups, with their spices and chilli notes, this one with its muted tones the colour of a winter sky, its soothing “there, there” quality and the feelgood factor that can only come from potatoes, seemed perfectly suited to the day. There are often looks of disbelief when I list celery as among my favourite vegetables, but it is. So radically are its mineral notes softened by cooking that an ardent celery refusnik lapped up this soup and asked for more.

As an accompaniment, there were potato pancakes the size of coins, to eat alongside. So good were they, I made a second batch the diameter of a crumpet, which we ate with an untidy nest of sauerkraut and a spoonful of sour cream. The batter, despite having a froth of beaten egg white stirred in to lighten it, kept well in the fridge overnight and we enjoyed them the next day with slices of gravlax and a mustard and dill dressing.

Celery soup with thyme and parsley

A deeply satisfying soup you can keep slightly rough or blend to a smooth purée as you wish. I like to leave a few pieces of unblended celery in there. Serves 6. Ready in 1 hour

potato 1, large
celery 1 large head (about 800g)
butter 60g
thyme leaves 1 tsp
spring onions 6
parsley 10 bushy sprigs
vegetable or chicken stock or water 1.5 litres
sour cream 150ml

Scrub, then roughly chop the potato.

Remove 6 tufts of bushy celery leaves and set aside for later.

Trim the root end and any dry ends of the celery stalks and discard. Roughly chop the ribs and attached leaves. Melt the butter in a deep saucepan over a moderate heat, stir in the potato and celery and partially cover the pan with a lid. You need it to soften and toast very lightly, but not to go brown.

Stir the thyme leaves into the celery together with a generous grinding of black pepper. Roughly chop the spring onions and parsley, and add to the celery. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes until everything is soft.

Pour in the stock or water, then bring to the boil. Lower the heat, still partially covering the pan with a lid, and simmer for 25 minutes. Correct the seasoning with salt, remove from the heat and stir in the sour cream, then eat with the pancakes below.

Potato pancakes

‘Fluffy’: potato pancakes. Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin/The Observer

You can make these fluffy pancakes with whatever potatoes you may have to hand, but I have had the best results using large floury white potatoes. Once they are boiled or steamed and drained, leave them for 5 minutes to let the steam escape. Crush them with a vegetable masher or, better still, a potato ricer, making sure they’re still warm – they will be easier to deal with that way. Serve them with smoked salmon or sauerkraut. Makes 12 large pancakes, serves 4. Ready in 1 hour

Peel the potatoes and cut them into large pieces, as you would for roasting. Boil the potatoes until tender in deep, lightly salted water in a medium to large saucepan – about 20 minutes, depending on the variety. When they are tender to the point of a knife, drain in a colander and either mash with a fork or, better I think, push through a potato ricer. Let the mash cool a little.

Separate the eggs, putting the whites into a bowl large enough in which to beat them. Mix the yolks together briefly with a fork. Season the potato with salt and black pepper – be generous. Finely slice the spring onions.

Warm the milk in a small pan and, when it is near to reaching the boil, remove from the heat and stir into the potato. Stir in the parsley, chopped spring onions, egg yolks, cream and the flour. Take care not to overmix. The mixture should be soft enough to fall from the spoon with a gentle shake (if it is too runny, stir in a little more flour).

Warm the oil in a shallow pan and add the butter. Place 3 large spoonfuls (I use a kitchen spoon about the size of a tbsp) of the mixture into the hot fat, each roughly the size of a digestive biscuit. Let them cook for about 5 or 6 minutes, then slide a palette knife under each and flip them over. Leave for a couple of minutes, until the underside is gold, then remove from the pan, place on a warm plate or, best of all, wrapped in a tea towel in a wicker basker to keep them warm.

Continue until all of the mixture is used up, replacing the oil and butter if necessary. Serve the potato cakes with the soup.

Follow Nigel on Instagram @NigelSlater