Everything you need to know about celery and its varieties: from green to white
Today we are going to discover one of the most important ingredients of natural cuisine, green and white celery. It is the king of pinzimonio, beloved since ancient times, a sacred plant for the Greeks. The Greeks dedicated the Sicilian city of Selinunte to this plant, from selinon, celery in Greek that grew wild and abundant by the sea, so “protagonist” that it was even depicted on coins from five centuries before Christ. Hippocrates advised him for agitated nerves, the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen suggested the seeds against melancholy, in the fifteenth century celery had made a somewhat mischievous reputation: the doctor Michele Savonarola (Girolamo’s grandfather) accused it of arousing in sir, the desire to make love and therefore advised against “those who chaste star vole” It will be necessary to wait until the eighteenth century for Madame de Pompadour to make fragrant soups to better satisfy Louis XV.
Green celery
Apium graveolens dulce, ie the “ribbed” variety, is cultivated for its fleshy, ribbed stems that end in green leaves. Among the best known is the Gigante di Romagna with a strong flavor, it is more suitable for cooking, for sautéing or for flavoring soups and soups. All varieties have refreshing and digestive properties. The seeds are used in herbal medicine and to prepare spirits.
White celery
Some varieties are subjected to bleaching, tucking the earth around the stems or wrapping them with sheets of paper or jute which makes the celery more crunchy, less fibrous and more delicate in taste than the green one. Other varieties are ‘self-whitening’, ie they remain white even when exposed to the sun. Ideal for salads and dips.
Celery is very rich in water so it is certainly a diuretic, it helps prevent kidney stones. Celery is also purifying, and for both of these functions it is also good taken in the form of centrifuged and juices. Since it has 16 calories per 100 grams, it is not caloric. While this is not entirely true, it is said that more calories are consumed chewing it than ingesting it. It is therefore ideal for those who are overweight or obese. It also contains non-soluble fiber, a set of properties that make it suitable for part of slimming diets and to fight bad cholesterol. This vegetable is good for bones and appears to have a protective role for nerve cells in Alzheimer’s patients. Like many other foods of plant origin, it is also useful in the prevention of cancer: several studies and scientific publications show that celery also has anticancer properties, thanks to a specific flavonoid it contains, luteolin. In cooking, celery is mainly used as a flavoring. It has a rather strong flavor and an unmistakable scent due to a strongly aromatic substance, sedanine. For this reason, celery is mainly used to give flavor to other foods such as salads, soups, minestrone. Celery is practically indispensable for example in the preparation of a good broth. However, it has numerous beneficial properties and it is therefore wrong to consider it as a food of secondary importance.
