Try This Vegetarian Take On a Classic Savory Strudel

Together with next125, the household brand for high-quality kitchens, we’re traveling around Europe to visit the most exciting food markets there are. United by our passion to turn every cooking experience into a very special one, we invite you to explore the best products from the market with us, and along the way, learn how to transform them into a memorable dish at home. Check out the fourth episode of our "To Market, We Go!" series: This time, we're joined by food blogger Melanie at the Slow-Food Market "Markt der Erde" in Austria’s bountiful Burgenland region.

To bring the flavors of Burgenland back with us to Berlin, we’ve created a recipe inspired by the market itself, both the local produce and the tips we picked up from the producers themselves. In this episode, food blogger Melanie Zechmeister, our guide to Burgenland, joins us back in Berlin in one of our next125 show kitchens to cook alongside Christian and reinterpret the classic strudel with unique produce they picked up at the market.

Melanie comes from a family of bakers, so it's no surprise that she was only too happy to suggest a strudel recipe. Not only is the strudel deeply rooted in Austrian culture, but it's also a pretty straightforward recipe, that can be made sweet or savory and can be varied according to your dietary style. Our recipe plays with tradition to make what we like to think of as a modern classic, with its smoked tofu and cabbage filling, potato gravy and the special touch of pickled black walnuts.

In this second episode of our Austrian journey as part of the "To Market, We Go!", Christian and Melanie talk you through the produce they decided to include and share all their tricks for the art of strudel making.

The basics: tricks for the best strudel dough

"In my family, we say: The strudel dough has to be paper-thin, so thin that you could read a newspaper through it!" shares Melanie in the video as she skillfully stretches the strudel dough in different directions with two hands, a helpful technique for strudel dough, which is stretched, rather than rolled. The rising time of the dough itself is also crucial, as per Christian’s advice: The longer you let it rest, the more elastic the dough becomes.

You can skip the meat

After our visit to the Manufaba tofu factory (watch the first episode of our Austria stop to see it for yourself), Christian couldn't get one product out of his mind: the smoked tofu. So how to include it into a traditional Austrian recipe? The woody fragrance of the freshly-smoked tofu reminded us of smoky bacon, which made it an easy leap to go for a classic cabbage stuffing and replace the bacon with finely diced smoked tofu. We sautéed the tofu from the market, letting it infuse the cabbage filling with the smoky note traditional calls for!

It's all in the combination!

Our cabbage strudel is served with a silky potato gravy made with potatoes that Christian and Melanie brought back from the market from the region’s most famous organic vegetable producer. The floury potatoes were cooked with shallots and a light white wine to create a light, but creamy (and yet, without any dairy!) sauce that pairs excellently with the strudel.

The final touch

The crunchy strudel dough and creamy sauce are complemented with a “special something” as a finishing top, which adds a hint of sweetness that rounds off the dish. At the market, Christian found a specialty that was previously unknown to many of us: sweet, pickled unripe walnuts, known as black walnuts, which have a distinctive flavor that is fruity with a hint of caramel If you don't have pickled black walnuts handy, we recommend using dried fruit, caramelized nuts, or even halved grapes tossed briefly in a pan with melted butter.

Click here to get to the full recipe:

And just like that, another market stop in our "To Market, We Go!" series comes to an end. This very special trip to Burgenland will continue to inspire us... and hopefully, you too! Have fun cooking and let us know what you thought of this installment!