Schnitzel, Salads & Fake Meat

An essay, and recipes for schnitzel, salads and fake meat. Words and photograph by Molly Pepper Steemson.

Good morning and welcome to Cooking From Life: a Vittles mini-season on cooking and eating at home everyday.

All paid-subscribers have access to the back catalogue of paywalled articles. A subscription costs £5/month or £45 for a whole year. If you wish to receive the newsletter for free, or wish to access all paid articles, please click below. You can also follow Vittles on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you so much for your support!

---

Cooking from Life is a Vittles mini-season of essays that defy idealised versions of cooking – a window into how food and kitchen-life works for different people in different parts of the world. Cooking as refusals, heritage, messiness, routine. 

Our twelfth writer for Cooking from Life is Molly Pepper Steemson. You can read our archive of recipes and essays here.

---

Schnitzel, Salads & Fake Meat

An essay, and recipes for schnitzel, salads and fake meat. Words and photograph by Molly Pepper Steemson.

My sister and I were raised by our gentile father, who assures us that our religious upbringing would have been the same (i.e. not religious at all) had our Jewish mother been alive to have her say in it. This was, at least in part, my grandmother’s doing. Under her roof, religious activities are verboten. If you ask her about her faith, she’ll tell you she’s an orthodox atheist. (She is also, not coincidentally, an electrical engineer.) But while she might not be religious, but she’s still very much a Jew. If you ask her where she’s from, she’ll respond:

I am a Jewish person who was born in Hungary; I am not Hungarian. They told me all my life I wasn’t Hungarian, so I’m not.

By ‘they’ she means the fascists, then the Nazis, then the Soviets. Hungarian antisemitism was one of the twentieth century’s more resilient pathogens.

By the time I was eight, the upbringing of my sister and I was solely dependent upon my father, and his version of a religious education was dependent on a single rule:

If you want to miss school for a Jewish holiday, you have to go to synagogue.

Dad knew our commitment to truancy was unwavering and, over the course of our adolescences, Tabitha and I became au fey with the holiday traditions of every Jacobs, Katz and Cohen within a three-mile radius. We’ve gone to their synagogues, broken their bread and drunk wine from their Kiddish cups.

It was only in our twenties that we decided to bring a Jewish holiday home. We hosted our first Passover at my stepmother’s house, introducing our family members to the extensive traditions of a Seder, including take-it-in-turns storytelling, the hiding (and finding) of a large cracker, and laying a place for the prophet Elijah (who is, of course, invited for dinner). Passover also has a vital culinary narrative. According to the Torah, the Jewish people were forced to leave Egypt in quite a hurry, so there was no time for their bread to rise. In remembrance of this, we do not eat leavened grains (chametz) over the eight days of Passover. We can, however, eat matzo (whose secular equivalent is actually corrugated cardboard) and its ground form, matzo meal. I do not keep kosher – I order bacon on my cheeseburgers like all the other nice atheist–Jewish girls – but, for some bewildering, guilt-addled, pseudo-spiritual reason, I would never serve chametz at a Seder.  

Hosting a Seder birthed something of a tradition for my sister and me. We established a regular invite list, made up of half, non-practicing and lapsed Jews, as well as my father, who we deemed Jewish-by-association. My sister made us our own Haggadah and I tested recipes for potato kugel. We both woke up at 5am to go to Smithfield and buy short ribs. Between making stock for soup, braising beef and baking cakes, Passover preparation could take days. It was an immense labour of love that had something of the effect of a Bat-mitzvah: we were establishing ourselves as adult Jewish women.  

This year, as Passover loomed, I was not in the mood to host a protracted dinner party. I was freshly single, newly unemployed, and the thought of ten of my closest friends and family members descending on the quiet home I had retreated to was just too much. I felt frightened of them and their boisterous Jewish love. At the very most, I thought, I could cook for two. I didn’t want the anticipation of a big Seder, or the fuss. I wanted to be able to buy everything I needed from the Waitrose on Holloway Road, morning of. I wanted something comforting and nostalgic. I wanted something fried and something pickled. I wanted schnitzel.

Schnitzel was among the regular rotation of dishes favoured by my grandmother’s five grandchildren. I don’t think we called it schnitzel, though. I don’t remember calling it anything. I do remember my grandfather teaching me to pound chicken with a meat mallet so it was the size of a plate and as thick as my thumb (Carefully, Molly! Not too hard, you’ll tear it). I remember whisking eggs and eating breadcrumbs straight from the jar.

Breadcrumbs are not kosher-for-Passover. This thought threw a spanner in the works, but only briefly; medium-ground matzo meal has an almost identical texture to Paxo breadcrumbs. I’d never eaten a matzo-breaded schnitzel before I made one, but it’s not my innovation; a favourite fish and chip shop, Nautilus, have been matzo-breading their fish for years.

One of my grandmother’s more frequently used phrases is, In my family, we do not waste food. Poverty and hunger were, along with antisemitism, the defining characteristics of her youth. When she cracks an egg, she scrapes her thumb around the inside of the shell to get the last of the whites out. The breadcrumbs we used for schnitzel were the blitzed ends of every loaf of bread that had gone stale before it’d been finished. With the beaten eggs and seasoned breadcrumbs left over from dredging her schnitzels, my grandmother would make us what she called Fake Meat.

She says, There’s no recipe for Fake Meat (though I have attempted one below). You just take the leftover breadcrumbs and eggs, clump them all together, and fry it. You couldn’t call Fake Meat a delicacy, but I think it’s delicious. It’s surprisingly foamy. I want it straight out of a hot pan, or off a sheet of kitchen roll, before we sit down to eat. My grandmother talks about Fake Meat as if it would never occur to her not to make it. Wasting good eggs is not an option. When I asked her if she’d ever make it on its own, she was alarmed, then characteristically forthright:

It is unfair to make it [Fake Meat] deliberately – it’s not right. It has to be the leftover. Fake Meat is by necessity, it’s not by design.

What follows is the recipe for the schnitzel I made on Passover, as well as recipes for the potato salad, French beans, and mildly pickled cucumbers that went with it. At my grandparents’ house we ate our schnitzel with sautéed potatoes and exceedingly steamed vegetables, but two decades and one holiday to Vienna later, I’m more inclined toward the acid crunch and sophistication of the schnitzel’s Germanic accompaniments. They can also all be made ahead of time, which is useful as schnitzel is best served fresh and hot.

---

Quantities are for two persons

Caperberry Vodka Martini

This is my favourite drink, I make them for everyone, all the time. It’s a brilliant start to all dinners but its pickley salinity is especially welcome here. 

Serves 2

Ingredients

·       120ml vodka

·       40ml white vermouth

·       2-3 tbsp caperberry brine, to taste

·       2 caperberries, to serve

Method

1.     Stir the vodka, vermouth and caperberry brine over ice until diluted.  Stir in one direction and for longer than you think you need to, about a minute.

2.     Strain into two very chilled glasses and garnish with caperberries. If you are drinking, follow the martini with a cold bottle of German or Austrian Riesling.

Matzo-Breaded Schnitzels

Serves: 2

Ingredients

·       2 chicken breasts

·       1-2 eggs, lightly beaten 

·       30g potato flour (I used this because it’s kosher-for-Passover, but it’s also light and does a good crispy thing. Assuming it’s not Passover, or you don’t care, normal flour is absolutely fine)

·       100g medium ground matzo meal, (you can swap for breadcrumbs, but you shouldn’t)

·       200ml vegetable oil

·       1 lemon, halved, to serve

·       Salt and pepper

Method

1.     Place each chicken breast inside a zip-lock bag or between two sheets of greaseproof paper, and hammer out with a rolling pin until flattened, about 1.5cm. The bottom of a saucepan or a wine bottle will also work if you don’t have a rolling pin. Season with salt.

2.     Lightly beat the eggs in a shallow dish that will fit one of the flattened chicken breasts. Add the potato flour to another dish and season liberally with salt. Tip the matzo meal into another and season well with salt and pepper.

3.     Take one of the chicken breasts and dip it into the potato flour, making sure both sides are covered. Shake off any excess flour and dunk the chicken into the beaten eggs, followed by the matzo meal. Do this with two hands, using one for the dry ingredients and one for the wet ones. You can double pane if you like, but in this instance it’s not actually as good.

4.     Warm the oil in a frying pan set over a medium heat. Once warm, add the chicken and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side, until golden and cooked through. Remove from the pan and rest for a few minutes on a cooling rack or on a plate covered with kitchen roll.

5.     Season with flaky sea salt and serve with half a lemon per person to squeeze over the top. Less than half a lemon is puritanical.

Fake Meat

Once you’ve dredged your schnitzels, you can go about making your Fake Meat. My grandmother is right, there’s really no recipe here: you’re just combining the leftover matzo meal and eggs (not the flour) until you have a kind of clump-able, mouldable thing. You could make them into shapes if you were feeling crafty. I wouldn’t.

Fry as you would a tiny little schnitzel. Season. Snack upon.

Potato Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients

·       500g new potatoes, any large ones cut in half

·       2 tbsp mayonnaise

·       2 tsp Dijon mustard

·       ¼ lemon, juiced, to taste

·       50g spring onions, sliced

·       A small handful of chives, chopped

·       Salt and pepper

Method

1.     Add the potatoes to a saucepan of cold salted water, bring to the boil and cook for 15-20 minutes, until tender. Drain well and set aside for a few minutes to steam dry.

2.     Whilst the potatoes are cooking, mix together the mayonnaise, mustard, a squeeze of lemon juice and season. Combine with the cooked potatoes, spring onions, chives and season to taste with salt and pepper.

French Beans

Serves 2

Ingredients

·       150g green beans, trimmed

·       1 tbsp olive oil

·       150g shallots

·       A small glass of white wine, about 100ml

·       Salt and pepper

Method

1.     Warm the oil in a frying pan set over a medium heat. Once warm, add the shallots and cook gently for 10-15 minutes, stirring often.  

2.     Whilst the shallots are cooking, add the beans to a saucepan of boiling salted water and cook for 4-5 minutes, until just tender. Drain and refresh under cold water.

3.     When the shallots are golden,  increase the heat, then add the wine and cook vigorously for 2-3 minutes, until reduced. Stir through the cooked beans and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Mildly Pickled Cucumber Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients

·       ½ cucumber or 1 small cucumber (I used a small cucumber, scraped a fork along its skin and cut it into rounds like frilly little flowers. This is unnecessary but charming. If I had a large cucumber, I would cut it lengthwise, scrape out the middle and slice it into crescent moons about the thickness of a pound coin).

·       ½ tsp salt

·       1 tbsp sugar

·       2 tbsp vinegar, basically any vinegar apart from balsamic will work

·       ½ red onion, thinly sliced

·       A small handful of dill, chopped

Method

1.     Add the sliced cucumber to a colander, stir through the salt and set aside for about half an hour, or as long as it takes to get everything else done.

2.     Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the vinegar, thinly slice the onion and chop the dill. Then shake off as much liquid from the cucumber as you can and combine with the vinegar mixture, onion and dill. Set aside for 10 minutes or so to gently pickle. Taste to check the season and adjust as needed.

I would be remiss not to mention that Claudia Roden’s Orange & Almond Cake is not only kosher-for-Passover but also completely delicious. It’s not really Passover without it.

---

Credits

Molly Pepper Steemson is a writer, editor and occasional sommelier. She is halfway through her Substack short story project, Very Short.

Vittles is edited by Rebecca May Johnson, Sharanya Deepak and Jonathan Nunn, and proofed and subedited by Sophie Whitehead. These recipes were tested by Joanna Jackson.