[No.4]   How I Made ‘Pickled Celery’ 　  1. 29, 2013

　The other day, I received a lot of big and nice celery from my farmer friend living in Hachijo-jima Island. Hachijo-jima is located 300 kilometers south of Tokyo. It is a beautiful big volcanic island where the average temperature of the year is 18 degrees. It’s called the island of the everlasting spring. He’s been sending me celery every year for more than 10 years and the timing is usually always at year-end but this time he sent me some of the beginning of the year. Celery is said to have been brought to Japan 1592, in the Bunroku era during the war of Bunroku Keicho-no-eki, by general Kiyomasa Kato, a commander of Taiko (general) Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It was from Korea was called and Kiyomasa-ninjin(carrot). It was also called Netherland Mitsuba(three leaf ). Since then Japanese have been familier with celery on our tables. When Isozaki san’s celery reaches us I always make pickled celery and it is very delicious.

　Now I will introduce how I make this‘‘Pickled Celery’

                                       Recipe（Material）

　celery 1.3kg 　salt 50g　vinegar 3.5 cup　sugar 400g (40 tablespoons)

　7 bay leaves   4 cinnamon sticks  7 cloves  20 grains pepper

　7 red chilli pepper

                                 How to make ‘Pickled celery’

Wash celery stalks and take off the strings of the celery. Sprinkle salt all over it in the bowl and remove the moisture with a stone weighting about 500g overnight. Put material except celery and salt in a pot and boil it.

Remove the water from the celery over one night and clean the celery stalk of water. At this important point the excess moisture must come out. Put the celery in the cooled mixture and pickle overnight. Remove the excess water and boil the juice again the next day. It is important to take off the celery’s water. Put the pickled celery back in the jar after the juice has cooled down to room temperature. (Also important is to take off the stringy part of celery first.)