Celery Salsa Should Be a Crime

A few months ago, my friend got me a book she saw in a charity shop called The Zodiac Cookbook: Fabulous Recipes for Every Star Sign, by Rose Elliot. It has the retro fare you’d expect – two-colour melon soup, rock cakes, etc – assigned to particular zodiac signs. These assignments based on herbs that are associated with particular planets (dill = Mercury), or just vibes (Aries = spicy). I thought I would try my hand at something like this, sharing a recipe I like – adaptations and all – that fit the bill, no aspic in sight. Right now we’re in Aquarius season, so I have picked a recipe that is so nuts (pine nuts, specifically) that it’s transcendental.

There is no book I complain about more than Ottolenghi Simple. A more accurate title would be: Simple for Ottolenghi. Or just: Not That Simple.

I have made many recipes from this cookbook, and every single one of them takes double the time it says it will, and includes a step (or five) that could be skipped or streamlined. I never take shortcuts when using a cookbook, though. Because in my opinion, the whole point of using a cookbook – as opposed to a hastily Googled recipe – is a willingness to cook on the author’s terms. Diana Henry likens this to inviting the author into your house and letting them cook for you.

So if Ottolenghi and co-author Tara Wigley tell me to bloom saffron, I’ll do it, even though I’m not sure it’s necessary. If they tell me to put celery in a salsa, I’ll do it, even though the use of celery should disqualify it from being called a salsa. If they tell me to add raisins, I will warn them that this could be considered a hate crime against all of Latin America, but I’ll do it. Just because it is Aquarius season, and if there is ever a time to try something that seems bonkers yet compelling for no reason you can easily pinpoint, it’s now.

The recipe’s official name is Bridget Jones’s Pan-Fried Salmon with Pine Nut Salsa. (I’m 100% confident they called it ‘Pine Nut Salsa’ so it sounded more appealing, but make no mistake, this is Celery Salsa.) Since accurate naming is clearly not this book’s forte, I am going to re-name it Aquarian Reverse Product Placement Salmon with Celery ‘Salsa’. (This is probably why they write best-selling cookbooks, and I write a free Substack about ‘astrology and culture’.)

The ‘Reverse Product Placement’ comes from how this recipe is based on a line Patrick Dempsey’s character tells Renee Zellweger’s in Bridget Jones’s Baby. It goes something like: ‘I’m a hot American surgeon who’s cooking you a healthy and delicious Ottolenghi recipe, so you should choose me over Colin Firth.’ The cookbook insists that this was not product placement, but in calling attention to how they were name-checked in a huge movie franchise, they are sort of reverse product placing themselves. (Is that a stretch? Sure, but so is putting celery in a salsa... and calling this cookbook Simple…)

For all my complaining about this recipe, and Ottolenghi Simple, I should clarify that this cookbook slaps. Everything I’ve cooked from it has been great. Not simple, and often more complicated than necessary, but great. It was the first cookbook I bought after I moved to London. I didn’t realise how sentimental I was about this until a few months ago, when I was moving apartments and had made a box of books to resell. I put Ottolenghi Simple in there, somewhere in the middle, and taped the box up. Then I untaped the box and retrieved Ottolenghi Simple, because to cook from (and complain about) this book is just a part of my personality now.

And this recipe is way better than it sounds. In fact, it’s awesome. It’s transcendent, which I’m not saying because it’s a creative synonym for ‘good’. It has truly transcended my understanding of what celery can do. When cut into small pieces and cooked, the fibrous grassiness goes away, but it’s still crunchy and fresh, and plays well with the briny ingredients in the ‘salsa’ (olives and capers, though you could probably just use one of these and it would still be good). I thought it would be one of those healthy and tolerable recipes that you just have to eat post-Saturn return because you’re an adult now, but it is actually craveable. The recipe uses it on salmon but I think it could be good on any protein – chicken, pork, halloumi, tofu, etc. This recipe that could win an Oscar. Nay, it could spurn a whole new Oscar category – ‘Best Food in a Movie’. That is the Aquarius way – using originality to pave the path for other people to exercise their originality.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s approach to business is also very Aquarius-coded. He helped usher in a new wave of London dining. He is known for spotlighting the cooks in his test kitchen, a sort of talent incubator for up-and-coming chefs who end up being famous themselves, like Ixta Belfrage. They take his style and run with it, making it their own, and he seems to encourage this. His brand could probably sustain itself without him, because his sensibility and his tastes can be faithfully interpreted by lots of other people. When I worked at Food52 we’d use ‘Ottolenghi-ish’ as an adjective and people knew exactly what we meant.

That’s the Aquarius effect – ideas that shift the narrative, spurn large movements. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce – all Aquarius suns. The shadow side of Aquarius is things like AI and nuclear energy, which has the Aquarian hallmarks of being inventive and humanitarian. But since that tech is controlled by mentally ill billionaires (of all astrological placements), they will try to use it for personal greed rather than the good of humanity.

ANYWAY, back to celery salsa: This recipe is awesome. I adapted it so it’s actually simple – roasting instead of pan-frying the salmon so you don’t have to use two frying pans, and so you can make the ‘salsa’ while the fish cooks, cutting some time and mess. I used dill instead of parsley because that’s what I had; and raisins for currants, for the same reason. I also live alone so tend to halve a lot of recipes, which are typically designed for 4. I didn’t chop the pine nuts because they are already tiny. (Honestly, ‘simple’ is a joke to them.) I bought pre-pitted olives instead of pitting them myself, and it still tasted great.

Adapted from the ‘Bridget Jones’s Pan-Fried Salmon with Pine Nut Salsa’ recipe from Ottolenghi Simple (p. 246 in the UK version). If you want to make the original version, it’s available for free here. I had this with a side of steamed new potatoes, which I used a bamboo steamer for – I swear it makes everything taste better.

Serves 2

2 salmon fillets (I used tails because those thin sliver-y slices drive me nuts, they are so expensive and not filling)
Lots of olive oil
A tiny pinch of saffron
50g raisins
2 celery sticks (90g)
15-30g pine nuts (yes, I know that’s double, but if you love pine nuts, go for it, the more the merrier here)
20g pitted olives, chopped (you could just tear them if you’re feeling lazy)
20g capers, plus 1 tbsp brine
10g dill (any non-woody herb should be fine)
Juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C fan/400F (or whatever the instructions on the fish packet says). Rub the salmon on both sides with oil, salt, and pepper, set aside.

2. Meanwhile, in a tiny bowl, add a pinch of saffron to a tablespoon of warm water, and set aside. In a different bowl, add boiled water from a kettle to the raisins (enough to cover it completely). Dice the celery into small squares and set it aside in yet another bowl, along with the pine nuts.

3. By now the oven should be pre-heated, so put the salmon in there for 10-15 minutes (or however long the packet says, or until a thermometer reads at least 63C/145F). Make the rest of the salsa as it cooks.

4. Chop or tear the olives and put them in yet another bowl. Add the capers and their brine, the saffron and its water, the dill or whatever non-woody herb you’re using, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Drain the raisins and add them. Taste and add salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

5. Set a pan to medium heat and add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. When it’s properly hot (an ingredient should sizzle upon contact), add the celery-pine nut mix and saute for 4-5 minutes. Be vigilant because the nuts could burn quickly. Take the pan off heat as soon as the pine nuts brown, and you can smell them toasting. Add the olive-caper-dill-raisin mix to the pan and mix, letting the residual heat mellow it all out.

6. By now, the salmon should be done. Put it on a plate(s), add the celery salsa on top, and enjoy, while appreciating all the Aquariuses in your life. You might also want to consider which house Aquarius falls in your chart (if the houses are different in Whole Sign vs. other house systems, think of it like one of those hotel rooms with a connected door). Think about any signs you have in Aquarius. And any planets transiting Aquarius right now. Or if you want to take the astrological language out of it and just think of it in your own terms, pay attention to where you feel stuck, and open your mind to an out-of-the-box solution. Think of something new and weird you can do, just for the fun of it. Don’t play Devil’s advocate – zoom out and see the Angel and Devil as part of a larger system, and reflect on all of it with a bit of detachment. Aquarius doesn’t like to take sides because it is the water bearer; it will give water to whoever needs it, even if they don’t like them, because Aquarius knows that in order for the whole to function well, everyone should have the energy and opportunity to contribute. Everyone, not just people with status.

• I really enjoyed dipping back into food writing! It’s been a while. I had a realisation recently that I actually just don’t like inventing new recipes; it’s not my skill set. But I love seeing what someone else is doing and tinkering, while giving them full credit, like the Genius Recipes column (RIP) and, honestly, most recipes in that old-school blog format, like Smitten Kitchen and my go-to Alexandra Cooks. So in that spirit, if you know of a recipe that feels very Pisces, send me a tip via DM or comment, I will check it out.

• If you are a writer, you should follow Yahdon Israel on Instagram here. I find his approach to the publishing industry so Aquarian, in that he re-frames the author’s number 1 gripe (self-branding) as something that can be empowering, if you know yourself and your values well enough to not sell out. In other words, it takes the ‘self’ out of ‘branding’, and gives it a more holistic, decolonial approach.