Ingredients
| 200g celeriac, peeled, diced into 1½cm pieces | |
| 125g sour cream (I used Zany Zeus brand) | |
| 2 eggs | |
| 20g flour | |
| ½ teaspoon baking powder | |
| 2 tablespoon finely chopped herbs (I used thyme, rosemary, parsley) | |
| 200g mixed mushrooms, sliced into bite-sized pieces | |
| 3 tablespoons butter | |
| juice of ¼ lemon | |
| 1 cup maple syrup |
A meat-free main definitely isn’t ‘less’, it’s just different. Whatever the reason to choose a vege dish, you can’t deny we all want delicious meals packed with flavour. If you’re used to cooking with meat, it takes a bit of a pivot to make veges the star ingredient. In this column we load up your knowledge so your vege meals pack a punch.
To dip our toes into this world, let’s start with brunch, the bastion of bacon, ham, sausages and black pudding. With this dish we’ve created a slightly dense, flavour-driven savoury pancake that is still light but textured. The key to this dish is that we’ll be replacing animal fat with sour cream, we’re adding texture and mouthfeel with mushrooms and creating savouriness by deeply browning the pancakes which gives that toasted flavour and contrasting it all with the sweet slight stickiness of maple.
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Instructions
| 1. | Steam the celeriac for 20 minutes. |
| 2. | Place it into a blender with 50g sour cream and blend until smooth. |
| 3. | Add the eggs one at a time and blend until fully incorporated. |
| 4. | Transfer the purée to a medium-sized bowl and sieve in the flour and baking powder. Mix well. |
| 5. | Mix the herbs with the rest of the sour cream and keep to one side. |
| 6. | Heat the oven to 80°C. Heat a medium-sized nonstick pan over moderate heat. |
| 7. | Add ½ tablespoon butter and melt until foaming. |
| 8. | Add 4 generous tablespoons of pancake mix to the centre of the pan and spread out with the back of the spoon to form a pancake approximately 14cm in diameter. |
| 9. | Cook for 4 minutes until bubbles appear and the edges are dry to the touch. |
| 10. | Flip the pancake and continue to cook for 2 minutes (the goal is to achieve a deep golden-brown colour; cook it for longer if the boxty appears pale). |
| 11. | Transfer to the oven and repeat for the remaining pancakes. |
| 12. | Heat the remaining butter in the pan until foaming, add the mushrooms and fry for 3-4 minutes. |
| 13. | Add the lemon juice and 2 tablespoons maple syrup and season to taste with salt and pepper. Toss mushrooms to coat. |
| 14. | Divide the pancakes between two plates and place the mushrooms in the centre of each boxty pancake. |
| 15. | Spoon the herbed sour cream into the centre and drizzle with the remaining maple syrup. |
Food styling, recipes & photography David Neville