Chickpea and butternut squash Schnitzel with kohlrabi mash

For a change I made some vegan Schnitzel. I normally use eggs for Schnitzel binding, but this time I decided to go without them and cheese, so I created these chickpea and butternut squash patties. They were quite soft in texture, but they still stuck together. I served them with kohlrabi mash to have a change to potato mash and also some roasted purple carrots.

Here is my recipe.

Chickpea and butternut squash Schnitzel:

½ cup dried chickpeas

1 butternut squash

1 vegetable stock cube

1 large onion

3 garlic cloves

A bunch of fresh coriander

Salt

Pepper

Ground cumin

Smoked paprika

Breadcrumbs (if needed)

Vegetable oil for frying

Method:

Soak the chickpeas overnight and cook them until they are done.

Peel the butternut squash, cut it into pieces and cook with a vegetable stock cube until it's done. Then mash it.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook in olive oil until soft.

Combine the components and mash them a little bit. I still like having some whole chickpeas in there, so I don't make too smooth of a burger material.

Shape burgers from the mixture and cook on both sides in oil.

Kohlrabi mash:

2 kohlrabi

1 garlic clove

2 tbsp butter

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Peel the kohlrabi and cut it to pieces. Cook the pieces in water until they are soft and mash them.

Chop the garlic finely and mix it into the kohlrabi.

Add the butter, salt and pepper.

Combine the components on a plate and enjoy!

As it happens, the theme for the vegetarian cooking challenge Vegetable Palette is orange this month, so I would like to share this vegan Schnitzel recipe with the challenge. Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table, who hosts this challenge made a good choice with the colour, as this season is full of orange veg, at least in my kitchen with all the squashes, pumpkins and carrots.

Have a great week!

Your VegHog

Lentil and pea burgers

No month goes by without veggie burger time for me and it's here again today! Sometimes it's almost like no week goes by without veggie burger time, especially now in this slightly colder season. This could be a good recipe, if you are planning cosy weekend evenings in. Have a lovely weekend all anyway!

In these burgers I combined red lentils with ground dried peas and pepper, and this is a really good and easy basic veggie burger recipe.

Makes a batch of about 15 burgers.

1 cup red lentils

1 cup ground dried peas

1 vegetable stock cube

1 pointy yellow romano pepper

1 large red onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

2 eggs

1 ½ cups spelt flour

Vegetable oil for frying

Ciabatta rolls

Tomatoes

New onions of the season

Gem lettuce

Rinse the lentils and cook them in water with added vegetable stock cube until they are soft. Add the ground dried peas just before the end, in order to cook them also for a couple of minutes. Drain the lentils and peas well and let them cool.

Chop the romano pepper, onion and garlic very finely.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and shape burgers from the mix. Add more flour, if needed for the firm texture. I normally add a couple of tablespoons of the mix and shape the burgers on the hot pan.

Heat vegetable oil in a large pan and fry the burgers on both sides until golden brown.

After the frying place them on kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil.

Serve as burgers with ciabatta rolls, tomato slices, new onions and gem lettuce.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Pepper fritters

It's about time for a new fritter recipe by me. You know how fond I am of veggie fritters, and I have now developed a new recipe. These fritters can be served as burgers just as well, but this time I combined them with salad and roasted potato wedges. Have a look how these are made.

This recipe makes about 12 fritters.

Ingredients

2 red bell peppers

1 carrot

1 shallot

1 garlic clove

50 g mature cheddar

1 egg

4-8 tbsp spelt flour (or wheat flour)

1 tsp Herbes de Provence

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

Grate the bell peppers, carrot and cheese.

Chop the shallot and garlic finely.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl into a fairly firm dough.

Add more flour if needed for the binding.

Fry the fritters in vegetable oil on both sides until golden brown.

This is how easy it is!

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Vegan Aubergine Schnitzel

[Schnitzel, das (ˈʃnɪtsəl) ~ German: cutlet, from ”schnitzen” to carve, ”schnitzeln” to whittle]

One of my passions is perfecting what I call the Veggie Schnitzel. Those are variations of different vegetarian burgers that can be eaten as veggie burgers or combined with many side dishes such as potato mash. This will be part one of many more Schnitzel entries in the future as the options are endless. The good thing with burgers is that you can make a larger batch once you get going and can then freeze some. What can be better on a lazy day than making a quick burger from the freezer.

I recently tried this new type of burger and found it to be tasty. I haven't been much of a friend of aubergine aka the eggplant but this time I decided to be brave and use it as the main veg for my burgers.

This is how I made them this time: First I started by chopping onions, garlic and slicing the aubergines. I then fried the aubergines in a pan until soft and mashed them with a hand mixer (I use a really cheap £5 hand mixer which does the work perfectly, there's no need for any fancy devices). You can also grate them even when raw but as a paste they stick better together which makes shaping and frying the Schnitzels much easier later.

Mix aubergine mash in a mixing bowl with onions, garlic and seasoning. If your dough is too fluid, add some flour until it is firm and easy to shape burgers with. Depending on your taste you can add other vegetables, cheese or potatoes to the mix.

This time I tired out a new approach to the breading, I avoided eggs which made this variation vegan. After shaping the Schnitzel into burgers I mixed potato flour with water and rolled the burgers there. This made a lovely smooth cover for the burgers and they stuck together without eggs! Then I rolled them in bread crumbs and they were ready to be fried.

Variation tip: Shape dough as balls or small nuggets.

Now, I don't own a deep frier, so I just heat oil in a pan and when hot add the burgers to it. Turn them around when they are fried brown from the one side. If you make a lot of dough, you might be frying for a while but it really is worth it.

A serving suggestion: With olive baguette, cheese and peppers.

As promised there will be more Schnitzel related content later, so this is all for this time.

Stay Schnitzel hungry!