Dear First name / friend,
Happy New Year, and a BIG welcome to the new subscribers here! If you've been a subscriber for a while, you'll know that the frequency of this newsletter over the last year has been, well, to be nice to myself, somewhat inconsistent. And to be not so nice and brutally honest: totally neglected. The latter being closer to the truth.
I've not not been busy, though. In fact, I've had the best year of my career to date, spending most of my time creating, filming and editing recipes to share on IG, with lots of fine-tuning and absolute consistency.
2024 was the year that I found my rhythm and my schtick, and my oh my what a difference a year makes. I feel truly blessed to have seen around 80,000 new food enthusiasts enjoy simple, yet elevated, dishes, and me spreading my love for anchovies, lemon and parmesan.
I do, however, want to bring this newsletter back in 2025. I really, really do! Most likely just once a week, sharing a more precise recipe and more of a deep dive into some of my favourite dishes on my feed.
OKAY, OKAY, LET'S GET TO THE CELERY SALAD
Indeed! Let's talk about this celery salad. The one on my feed has been viewed almost half a million times, and has been saved by 19,000 people.
This is not an original recipe. It's from a restaurant in Brooklyn called The Four Horsemen. I ate there many years ago, but we did not eat this salad. I actually only just heard about it from someone I met at a party recently when we were chatting about our shared love of lemon and parmesan and all things fresh and crunchy, and she mentioned this incredible salad that she'd eaten at The Four Horsemen, one that she always recreates at home:
“Celery, dates, walnuts, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and parmesan.”
My ears pricked up! I was like “damn, that sounds good!”
And, here we are! I made it and filmed it last week and can wholeheartedly confirm that The Four Horsemen celery salad is a 10/10!
Now, I know very well that celery is a super polarising vegetable.
And I totally get it. Taking a bite out of a stringy celery stick has almost zero appeal to me too. But celery is used across so many dishes for a very valid reason.
It's salty and fresh. It makes it way into every slow cooked meat dish or soup of note. And, when treated properly, it's very, very delicious and almost indispensable thanks to its unique, savoury flavour.
In this instance, and as for most of the veggies you've told yourself you don't like, it all comes down to the way we prep it.
Slicing celery super fine with a sharp knife (or even a mandoline) on an angle, leaves you with absolute crunch, freshness & saltiness and is completely free of that stringy texture you can get when it's in straight-up stick form.
In this salad, as the celery gets lathered in lemon juice, olive oil, salt, parmesan and the sweet, sticky residue from the dates, you're left with with a somewhat softened, slightly broken down, wafer thin piece of celery that has soaked up all of those beautiful flavours with utmost dedication, whilst still retaining that perfect level of bite and crunch!
Do yourself a favour and make this one. Whether you're a lover or a hater of celery, it's very hard not to love this salad.
