Celery Leaf

Selino is not quite the celery sold in British supermarkets. Greek markets sell a leafier, thinner-stalked plant with a much stronger flavour, grown for its leaves as much as its stems, and a Greek recipe calling for celery almost always means the whole thing, leaves included. The leaves carry most of the flavour, which is why a recipe will often specify that they should not be thrown away.

Hirino me selino, pork and celery finished with avgolemono, is the winter dish that shows what it can do: whole handfuls of it, stalks and leaves together, cooked down with pork until the celery is soft and the sauce tastes as much of it as of the meat. Cyprus cooks celery with kolokasi and pork in the same spirit, the taro taking on its flavour over a long, slow braise.

It also goes into fasolada and most bean and pulse soups, and into the stockpot, where a few leafy stalks do more than the same weight of a paler, milder celery would. If only supermarket celery is available, use the darker outer stalks and keep every leaf, or look for what is sold as leaf celery or Chinese celery, which is much the same plant.