Stuffed Celery with Blue Cheese Mousse a la Musso and Frank

Blue cheese and celery: an hors d’oeuvre classic or a simple cheese course.

The most important thing is the celery has to be served cold. At Musso and Frank, they serve it on crushed ice.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Celery

What you need:

8 oz blue cheese (I like Wisconsin’s Castle Rock or Northern Lights from Minnesota)

1 cup heavy cream, plus about 1/4 cup

1 tsp Worcestershire

salt to taste

1 stalk celery

sliced black olives

Tools:

robot coupe or food processor

stand mixer

knife

cutting board

if desired, pastry bag

What you do:

Bleu Cheese Mousse

Cut the blue cheese into small pieces or crumble it using your hands. Place it in the food processor. Pulse the blue cheese a few times so it breaks up, then turn it on. Add a couple splashes of cream if needed and let it get fairly smooth.

In the stand mixer, pour 1 cup of cream into the bowl. Using a whisk attachment on medium low speed, whip until just soft peaks. Remember, the slower you whip cream, the more stable it is. Add the creamed blue cheese into the whipped cream and mix on low to incorporate. Season with Worcestershire and salt. Fill the pastry bag with the blue cheese mousse.

Celery

Cut off the root end of the celery stalk. Cut each rib into 5 - 6“ pieces on the bias. Soak in ice water for 10 minutes. You can also peel the celery to remove the fibrous outside.

Pat the celery dry and fill with the blue cheese mousse and stud with black olives. Serve cold on crushed ice.

All the Things You Never Really Wanted to Know About Celery

The raw vegetable crudite platter is the most snubbed guest at a party. Everyone makes a beeline to the cheese, sliced meats, potato chips, and crackers. Heck, even the salted nuts get some love. But those veggies are like the weird, smelly kid in elementary school; if you make eye contact, you’ll start to feel guilty. I mean, the vegetables are just there to be a vessel for the hummus or ranch, and once that’s gone, it’s game over. Even if someone does happen to enjoy raw veggies, the celery is left untouched until it starts to look sad and dry.

But it wasn’t always that way. Celery was a luxury. Tell that to the celery sticks, once again, sitting untouched in your buffalo chicken wing basket.

Celery is native to the Mediterranean and wasn’t cultivated in England until the Victorian Era in the 1800s. Basically, it was hard to grow, therefore hard to buy, and thus, it was irresistible. Basic econ, people. Some preparations included it braised, dressed with mayonnaise, au veloute, and au gratin and were found in cookbooks and on restaurant menus. It was also considered to be essential as an accompaniment of game birds. Celery was fashionable to serve and to display in glass vases, a serving piece no proper household would be without. In fact, it was one of the centerpieces on tables for upper-class dinner parties, and the vases were made specifically for celery. The vase would be filled with a little water to keep the celery fresh so it could either be on display throughout the event or left out and snacked on throughout the day. Even middle class or poorer families would prepare celery for a special after-dinner treat during the holidays.

But everything that’s trendy eventually comes to an end. Celery vases were so common and “basic” that high society wanted to now place the celery in long, flat glass dishes. In fact, Jessup Whitehead stated in The Steward’s Handbook and Guide to Party Catering that celery was now not “fashionable” served in the vases. A few years later, the 1891 issue of Ladies Home Journal listed in an article “When and How to Serve Some Things” (wkndr piece coming soon?) that echoed the same thing. And poof, see ya later, celery vases.

However, celery was still all the rage. It was common to serve it raw as an accompaniment to a cheese course which quickly evolved into stuffing cheese (typically cream cheese) into the celery. Celery was also offered as a palate cleanser following the fish course or soup course which seems to be the reason celery is served with hot wings today.

Celery eventually made its way to America by Dutch farmers who knew how to grow it in marshy soils, specifically in Kalamazoo, Michigan AKA Celery City. It soon found its way onto holiday menus in the US and became a common hor d’oeuvre or mid-day snack.

Why are there olives with the stuffed celery or on relish trays? I’m glad you asked. Olives were only available in Europe until California started their production. They were not only introduced at a similar time with the growing transportation infrastructure but they’re also both palate cleansers. Celery and olives were paired together because they were both “trendy,” and it was almost unheard of to have one without the other. There’s a whole slew of information about Thanksgiving menus and how celery and olives had to be on it - and were the star of the show, even above turkey - but I’m sure you’re thinking, I never needed to know this much about celery.

So why is celery now one of the least liked vegetable? Especially in the US, celery had a swing of going in and out of “fashion”. After WWII, produce and goods were able to be shipped everywhere around the country and the world. Grocery stores were now full of products from almost anywhere. “New” vegetables and fruits were now trendy and celery got pushed to the side because, well, it’s bland and doesn’t have a lot of flavor. But when more women started working, celery made it’s way back to the table on relish trays as women wanted quick preparations and recipes for the holidays or dinner parties.

Celery is still essential to those relish trays, mire poix, the holy trinity, sofrito, potato salad, and holiday stuffing - but how often is it the star? My biggest gripe: you have to buy a whole stalk of it but only need one rib and the rest sits in the vegetable drawer of your refrigerator until you clean out your fridge and throw it away because it’s wambly and soft. (I always feel like I’m Steve Martin in Father of the Bride when he freaks out about the quantity of hot dogs verses the hot dog buns - can’t I just buy two ribs!?) But it still can be appreciated. The right time and the right preparation. Ants on a log, blue cheese stuffed, in salads, juiced, or pickled (the list is small, yes). Here’s an insider’s tip to make it more palatable and pleasant to eat: peel it. By removing the fibrous strands, you’ll lose the “stringiness” that’s commonly associated with celery.

But honestly, the stuffed celery with Roquefort mousse at Musso and Frank was a revelation to me of “oh my god, do I love celery now?” And it’s because it was served simply, and it was ice cold. I think that’s the key - along with peeling it. And maybe if those crudite platters were served on ice a la shellfish, they might be more popular as an hor d’oeuvre, and celery could finally have its fame back.