Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Celeriac Schnitzel



Admittedly, we haven't sprung out as full blown vegetarians here, but the other day, when someone asked if we had, I couldn't even remember the last time we'd had meat for dinner. Sometimes, I do have to make an effort, since you can't just make a salad, and expect two small kids and one metabolically active husband to be satisfied. We eat burgers, just with soy patties. We enjoy "chicken" fajitas with quorn instead. Someone mentioned making schnitzel out of celeriac once, I gave it a try, just winging it, and wasn't that impressed. I decided to give it another try, and scoured up some tips on teh interwebs. This time, I loved it! Not only that, my boys wolfed it down as well, oblivious to the sneaky veggie hidden inside, just happy to eat something pan fried and crunchy.

The lowdown:

- Take 1 whole celeriac, peel or cut the hard skin off. Cut in in half, and take each halve and slice it into finger thick slices.
- Steam/boil the celeriac until a knife easily pierces them, app. 16 minutes. Let them cool off a bit before the next step, and drizzle them with lemon juice while cooling. Don't go easy on the lemon btw.
- Prepare two shallow bowls. One with 1 egg, beaten. The other with bread crumbs. Add a good amount of salt and pepper to the crumbs, to ensure a flavourful crust.
- Melt a knob of butter and a drizzle of your choice of oil in a pan over low heat. Low heat is key here, you want these to fry up delicately and not be darker than golden.
- Dip each slice of steamed celeriac in first egg, then crumbs, and fry 'em up (in butter!), turning after the golden color has been attained.

Serve with a side of salad and/or potatoes like I did. Next time I might do a sauce/gravy to beef it up a bit, but even without this is a mouth watering dish!

9 comments:

Bri said...

I've never eaten celeriac before.. always seemed a bit bland and boring. I've seen it alot here so I might give this a go... mmmmm fried....

Anonymous said...

Do it! But it's just very important to steam it properly, so it's nice and tender, drench it in lemon for that lemony edge, and season your crumbs well. Maybe too well. Even a sprinkle og something spicy would be nice. Try it and let me know.

I get one celeriac a week in my CSA box, and this is the best way to use it up quickly.

Bri said...

My creative juices (or drool) are liking the sound of these crumbs with bite! I'll definately get back to you with how it all goes, might be in a week or two though as we're in the middle of moving.

Anonymous said...

Hope your move doesn't have anything to do with your future hubby having to appease the Udlændinge Service! Ah well, don't break your back, at any rate. :)

Bri said...

Nope. Fingers crossed that we wont have to do a move to Malmö later in the year though! I'm still a little too young apparently.

Unknown said...

We tried the schnitzels, and they were so good that we had to have them two days in a row. We'll definately have more soon!

Mikkel (the future hubby of "Fairy", who is still firmly grounded in the Amager soil).

Anonymous said...

Mikkel (and Fairy) - Great! I'm glad they were a success with you guys too!

Actually since I'm doing this Lent thing, I thought I'd give a vegan version of these a try. Will blog about how that goes. No egg, no butter...hope it turns out as good as these did!

Glad you're still "indenfor kommunegrænsen" :-)

Bri said...

They have been a huge success :D We've tried adding szechuan pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika.. and they all turned out well.

What do you intend to use as an egg substitute?
I think that Becel stuff would be a great substitute for butter - from the ingredients list it seems vegan. The omega 3 is from the flaxseed oil and the omega 6 is from the sunflower oil.

Anonymous said...

I asked the person who introduced this whole concept to me, and she said that a little bit of soy milk mixed with mustard worked well here. Haven't tried myself yet, but i imagine it will do nicely. Egg substitutes are really THE problem so far, with eating vegan. My, those eggs are really everywhere. I'll have to check out that Becel. I've never used it, or the plant based spreads instead of butter before.