Since I've got the frypan out

Rustling around in the freezer the other day, I found I still had schnitzel left over from making cordon bleu a few weeks back. My intention at the time was to use these for wiener schnitzel (p132), but instead, they got bunged in the freezer and forgotten.

Time to take up that idea again - I got the schnitzel out to thaw, and had a quick look through my Edmonds book to see if there were any suitable vege recipes I could make to have with it. There wasn't anything that seemed like a particularly good match, but I decided since I'd be frying the schnitzel anyway, I may as well fry up some vegetable fritters(p167) while I was at it.


The fritters required marginally more effort than the schnitzel, so I started with those, sifting flour, salt, baking powder and curry powder into a bowl, then adding grated onion (why grated? it just turns to mush) before gradually adding milk to make a smooth paste.


The next ingredient was the grated veges - there are several suggested vegetables, but I just used good old potato and carrot, since that's what I happened to have. Finally, I beat an egg white until stiff, and folded that carefully through the mixture. I was sceptical about how effective this would be, but it actually made the batter quite a bit lighter and less gluggy.

Before heating my frying pan, I quickly prepared the schnitzel, dipping each piece in beaten egg, then coating in breadcrumbs. I did have a collection of odd-sized pieces, since the package I'd happened to thaw was made up of offcuts that resulted from trying to get nicely-shaped, nicely-matched pieces for my cordon bleu.


I heated oil in the frypan and dropped in spoonfuls of the fritter mix. They cooked quite nicely, but I had trouble determining the correct amount of oil to have in the pan - there was definitely too much in there when I cooked my first batch, and the next batch went too dark because there wasn't enough.


When I finished my fritters, I added a bit more oil and plonked the schnitzel in. I have to say I didn't do a very good job of cooking these - I wanted to get a nice even crisping on the crumb, but some parts were overcooked while others had hardly browned up at all. I don't think I had enough oil in the pan.

They still tasted good, though. The fritters weren't exactly an ideal accompaniment - they are really more suitable for a light meal than a side dish - but at least it ticked off another recipe. The fritter I snuck while I was still cooking was delicious - straight from the pan, they're crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. By the time I'd cooked the schnitzel and taken a few photos, they'd cooled down a lot and weren't nearly as nice.


So if you're going to make vege fritters, (and by all means give them a try - they're cheap, simple and tasty) just make sure you eat them piping hot from the pan. As for the schintzel: it's pretty easy to whack on a crumb coating, which gives an otherwise boring piece of meat a bit of crunch. Just try to fry yours a bit more evenly than I did mine!