Recipe: Geschnetzeltes

I’m not great in the kitchen. I find that the only times I attempt to really cook is when I miss home and am trying to make German food like my mom used to make for my sister and I when we were growing up. Geschnetzeltes is probably the most simple of dishes, and so delicious and creamy when made right. It’s enjoyable all year round, and can be teamed with all sorts of simple sides.

Ingredients:

1 handful of parsley

1 small onion

250 g mushrooms

600 g veal

3 tablespoons of clarified butter

1 tablespoon of flour

Salt

Pepper

1/8 L white wine

200 g of single cream

Method:

First off, I like to prepare all of my ingredients, measure anything that needs to be measured. That kind of thing.

I’d then wash the parsley and shake it dry before chopping the leafy bit into tiny pieces.

Peel half and then proceed to dicing the onion finely. Depending on what kind of mushrooms took your fancy, I clean my white button mushrooms and cut them into 3-5 mm sized slices. I’d say not too thin, not too thick. If you know what I mean.

Now on to the Veal: I like to cut thin finger sized slices that are around 3-4mm. You basically want the meat to be as thin as possible without cooking in the pan later on.

Heat a large pan and add the clarified butter.

Add one third of the veal to the very hot pan and let it fry for around 3-4 minutes until this has a light brown colour. Try not to move the veal in the first two minutes or so of frying, and don’t yet add any salt!

After the first 2 frying minutes, sprinkle the flour over the veal and mix around a little. Take the veal out of the pan and place onto a large plate to let sit and do its thing. I typically wipe out the pan I just used with some kitchen paper, and re-heat with another teaspoon of clarified butter and add the second portion of veal. Same story again with the heating at high temperature.

And finally I add the third portion of veal with the remaining clarified butter.

Add the onion and mushroom to the now empty again pan and fry on a high heat for 2 minutes.

Add salt and pepper liberally, and finally the white wine, before turning down the heat.

Now add the cream and stir gently until the mixture is thick and saucy.

Fold in the parsley before adding the veal, which should only be seasoned with salt and pepper now.

Let simmer for another minute or 2 – anything longer than that will dry out the veal.

Serve the Geschnetzeltes with rice to make it simple and quick, or Kartoffelpfannkuchen, Kräuter - Quarkknödel or Süßkartoffelrösti if you're going all out German.

Guten Appetit!