Deliciously crunchy with my all time favourite mayo

Okay so it's becoming pretty evident I like fried cauliflower! If you have tried my Korean fried cauliflower with sticky chilly sauce, you will know why. Fried cauliflower is awesome. I love it both deep fried in batter with a yummy sauce or pan fried in a super hot pan so it goes all nice and smokey and charred but. Really you can't go wrong.

Clearly I am not the only one to think this, I am seeing fried cauliflower everywhere. It seems to have become the new fried chicken. I reckon that after a few drink you could totally convince hard core carnivores that it was chicken! In fact, my kids call my fired cauliflower (minus the chilli sauce of course) chicken nuggets and seriously love it. Going to try it with broccoli soon to get some more greens into them!

The inspiration behind this recipe, aside from my love of cauliflower, was a big batch of vegan mayo I had left over. I needed an excuse to eat it and my fridge was pretty bare except some left over cauliflower from a shoot. Considering how much I love fried cauliflower, it's not hard to see how I ended up creating this recipe. I can't believe I didn't think of making cauliflower schnitzel before! It seems to obvious now. As the mayo was vegan I thought I might as well make the schnitzel vegan as well so used the same battering technique as with the Korean cauliflower. If you're not vegan, you could use an egg to bind the crumb, but I really like the hint of beer that the batter brings to the dish.

The flavours in this recipe are pretty simple, but I love it. I often like to layer a whole lot of different flavours into my food but this one lets the mayo and crunchy texture of the crumb coating shine. Really it's all about the delicious mayo with the classic flavour combination of capers, dill and horseradish. Yum. The mayo is a bit like a tartare sauce, so you could say that this is actually more like a vegan version of battered fish than a schnitzel. But who cares, it's yum.

All it needs is a fresh simple green salad, some lemon and you are good to go. I served this with a celery leaf and herb salad. Any salad that is light and vibrant with a bit of bitterness would work. Would also be excellent with a fennel salad such as my orange, green olive, almond, fennel and dill salad. If you are keen to add some extra plant based protein to this dish, some fresh greens peas would be a great addition.

Vegan Cauliflower Schnitzel with Horseradish, Dill and Caper Mayo

Prep and cooking time: Approximately 1 hour.

Serves: 4

Dietary guide: This recipe is vegan. To male it GF use gluten free bread crumbs, beer and baking powder and replace the plain flour in the batter with cornflour. To make it FODMAP friendly, make the above GF adaptations and use broccoli heads instead of cauliflower and omit the garlic for the mayo

Ingredients

Half a large cauliflower

¼ cup of rice flour*can substitute with plain flour but keep seperate from the ½ cup of plain flour)

2 teaspoons of finely chopped parsley (optional)

200g of panko bread crumbs or fresh white bread crumbs

500ml of vegetable oil for shallow frying

For the batter

1 cup of cold beer or soda water

1 teaspoons of baking powder

½ cup of corn flour

½ cup plain flour

For the vegan mayo

1/4 cup soy milk

1 1/2 teaspoons American mustard

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1/2 cup of mild veg oil

1 medium garlic clove

1 1/4 teaspoons of salt flakes

1/2 teaspoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of horseradish

1 teaspoon of baby capers

2 teaspoon of chopped dill

1 teaspoon of chopped chives

Black pepper to taste

*can substitute with plain flour but keep it seperate from the ½ cup of plain flour for the batter

Method

First make the mayo. Prepare the garlic by “creaming it” - grind the garlic and the salt flakes in a mortar and pestle until it forms a rough paste. Add a teaspoon of the veg oil and mix together. Scrape out the creamed garlic into a 2 cup capacity jug. Add the soy milk, mustard and lemon juice. Emulsify for 30 seconds using a handheld stick blender. Add the oil in a slow stream whilst continuing to mix with the stick blender. It will thicken up. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until combined. Taste and adjust for your tastes i.e. add more horseradish if you like it stronger .
Cut the cauliflower into “steaks” about 2.5 cm thick. You can choose to keep them large (i.e. one slice across the half cauliflower) or cut the cauliflower into quarters before slicing if you want smaller schnitzels.
Pour the oil into a frypan with high sides. You might not need all the oil – you just need enough so the cauliflower will be at least half submerged in the oil when added. Heat over medium – low heat.
Whilst the oil is heating, prepare the batter for the schnitzel. Place the plain flour, corn flour and baking powder in to a medium mixing bowl (do NOT add the extra plain flour if you are using it instead of rice flour). Using a whisk, slowly mix the cold beer into the flour. Don't over mix, the odd little lump is okay.
Place the rice flour (or extra plain flour if substituting) into a shallow bowl and season with salt and pepper. Place the panko crumbs in another separate bowl and mix through the parsley. You should now have 3 bowls; one with seasoned rice flour, one with the batter and the other with the bread crumbs. Place them in this order on your bench.
Check on your oil to see if it's ready. You want it to be about 170 degrees. You can test it with a cube of bread – it should go brown within a minute. If the oil starts to smoke, you know your oil is too hot.
Now prepare the cauliflower schnitzels. Dip a cauliflower steak into the seasoned rice flour (bowl 1). Make sure the cauliflower is evenly covered in the flour (this helps the batter stick). Drop the floured cauliflower piece into the batter (bowl 2) and using one hand (keep the other one clean for crumbing) evenly coat the cauliflower in the batter. Remove the cauliflower from the batter slowly letting any excess batter fall back into the batter bowl. Transfer to the panko crumb bowl (bowl3) and toss well using your clean dry hand to help pat the crumb onto the batter. You want as much crumb on there for optimal crunch. Remove, gently shake off excess crumbs and place the crumbed cauliflower in the hot oil. It should sizzle immediately, if not turn up your oil. If it browns really quickly, turn down the heat. It should take about 2 minutes for the underside of the cauliflower to go nice and golden brown – you will be able to see the colour change on the edges of the cauliflower. Flip over and cook for another couple of minutes or until both sides are nice and crispy and dark golden. Remove and place on some paper towel.
Repeat this process with the remaining cauliflower. If your frypan is big enough, you can fry multiple schnitzels at once. If you aren't' confident multitasking, you can crumb all the steaks first and then fry them.
Season the schnitzels and serve immediately with the mayo and a slice of lemon. I suggest serving it with a nice fresh herby green salad.