Never judge a book by its cover

My organic food box delivered this ornery looking vegetable, which of course made me wonder:
What do you do with a vegetable that has a face only a mother could love?
Celeriac, that root vegetable loved by the French and misunderstood by the rest of us, turns out to be full of flavourful surprises.
The first challenge is to peel the beast. Its rough outer core requires a good, sharp knife but turns out to be far less work than, say, a turnip.
Once peeled, time is of the essence. Celeriac is like an apple: it browns quickly when exposed to air. So the trick is to dice or chop into matchstick sized pieces quickly, then douse the lot with fresh squeezed lemon juice to keep it from discolouring.
Since it was my first time working with the vegetable, I turned half of it into matchsticks and tossed it in a lemon vinaigrette composed of the juice of one lemon, equal parts olive oil and half a head of roasted garlic. I seasoned it with salt, pepper and threw in fresh chives from my spring garden.
It was ... okay. Just okay. Tastes like celery, but don't bother to try this at home, folks.
With the other half, I cut it into cubes and tossed it into a pot with chicken stock, two diced potatoes, dried thyme, bay leaves, salt, pepper and the other half of the roasted garlic head.
Twenty-five minutes later the vegetables were tender and ready for a puree in my most prized of kitchen possessions, the hardest working tool in the kitchen toolbox, my food processor.
I spooned the steaming soup into bowls and crowned it with shredded white aged cheddar and more chopped chives. It was so good it just might displace homemade mac and cheese as the ultimate comfort food.
My friend Phil, who goes to far greater hosting lengths than I ever would, has been far more experimental with celeriac.
He raves about this recipe, which combines pureed celeriac with truffled butter (he combines unsalted butter with truffle oil to 'give it that earthy flavour'). I didn't have truffle anything on hand, so I turned to the ever trusted roasted garlic, which I think should be elevated to truffle status anyway.
But Phil's greater triumph came in the form of this recipe,which he vaguely recalls turned out well during a dinner party where he entertained his guests by "doing a lovely job burning my hand in serving the meal. I made it through dinner before finally agreeing to go to the hospital (and eventually getting some amazing pain-killers for third-degree burns)."
Having now enjoyed celeriac in some, though not all, of its glory, I'm sure the meal was well worth the sacrifice. At least he lived to tell the tale.