Buckwheat is a very versatile ingredient. It can be cooked in water or stock, sprinkled on top of small buns and baked, or used as buckwheat flour for really flavorful pasta. To enhance the mild flavor of buckwheat, it should always be paired with smooth and light accompaniments. In the simple and light dish below I filled the buckwheat ravioli with a creamy celery root puree, which really allowed the nutty flavors of buckwheat to get into the foreground.

Recently, I’ve been using my steaming basket quite often. For this recipe I decided to steam the diced celery root instead of cooking it in milk. One drawback of cooking in milk over low heat is, that it takes a very long time until the vegetables are really soft and I regularly have to look after the cooking process to prevent the milk from caramelization. Caramelized milk develops an odd unwanted flavor, which I try not to incorporate into my purees. The other advantage of steaming is, that the resulting celery root puree was much more dense and creamy as compared to the cooked version. In the near future I will use my steaming basket even more often for making purees.

During plating I added some dollops of fresh goat cheese, which I sprinkled with pomegranate seeds, orange flavored melted butter and chestnut honey. For a crispy element I remembered my grandmother’s Pogácsa (small savory treats), which she used to sprinkle with buckwheat. So I briefly baked a few buckwheat seeds in the oven and sprinkled the plate with a few pinches of it. Each component of this dish paired great with all the other elements and made each bite taste slightly different, which helped to keep the dish interesting until the last bite. If prepared in a larger quantity, this dish can be easily turned into a vegetarian main course as well.

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