It was Jacques Houdek who once said, ‘Dare to dream, make a meal’ – ok yes, that wasn’t quite the lyric, but with this year’s slogan ‘Dare to Dream’ why not make a few adaptations! With this year’s contest quickly approaching, it’s time to start planning your Eurovision parties. With the help of Eurovision Union, you can plan out the ultimate Eurovision party for you and your friends!
Over the last month, we’ve gathered some of the tastiest and most intriguing dishes from across the participating nations and we have put our aprons on to test out these recipes! We selected a diverse range of food, as well as both savoury and sweet dishes, so if you are hosting a Eurovision party this year, you can take inspiration from our cooking adventures across Europe and recreate these dishes for you and your friends!
Schnitzel (Austria)
We are heading to Austria for our next delicious dish, and when thinking of Austrian food, it’s hard to go past the classic Wiener Schnitzel. It’s likely you have come across this dish before, or something similar under a different name, but if you haven’t, you are in for a treat. A Weiner Schnitzel is thin, breaded, pan fried veal, and although the meat can be substituted, it was decided by the Austrian and German good committees that for it to be traditional, it has to be veal.
As good as the veal variety is, we often cook schnitzels with chicken and they are just as delicious, and even pork can be used. The schnitzels are often served with a lettuce salad, potato salad, cucumber salad or parsley potatoes. Long story short, it’s good with some sort of potato and some sort of salad!
Since schnitzels are not an uncommon meal in my household, we didn’t follow a recipe. It’s a simple dish that requires thin meat, flour, egg and breadcrumbs in which you cover the meat with, in that order. You then pan fry the schnitzels until golden. Even though we didn’t use a recipe, one will be added below if you would like to try this for yourself, or for your Eurovision party!
Here is a recipe for Schnitzels (credit: A Perfect Pantry):
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Total time: 30 mins
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup plain flour
- 2 x 59g free range eggs, lightly whisked
- 1 ½ cups panko bread crumbs
- ½ cup parmesan cheese, grated
- ½ tsp dried Italian herbs
- 600g chicken tenderloins
- 40g butter
- ¼ cup olive oil
Instructions:
- In three separate bowls, place flour in one, eggs in one and the bread crumbs, cheese and Italian herbs in one
- In that order, dip the chicken tenderloins and place onto a plate to rest (i.e. flour, egg, bread crumb mixture)
- Preheat fry pan to a medium heat and put butter and oil in the pan
- Add the chicken schnitzels one at a time and cook for 5 minutes on each side. Place onto absorbent paper towel to drain for 5 minutes and then serve with tomato sauce
Here’s what we started with:
And here is our finished product!
Beer List
Our resident beer expert has done research (and a whole lot of tasting) to come up with some of the must-try beers of the nation. For each nation there are three suggestions:
- The National Treasure – this is a beer that is recognisable and accessible to buy
- The Party Starter – this is a nicer alternative, but still fairly accessible to buy
- The Show Stopper – this is for the beer enthusiasts or those with a sense of adventure, but may not be as easy to purchase outside of that nation
Austria
The National Treasure – Trumer Pils (Pilsner – 4.9%)
The Party Starter – Bevog Rudeen Black IPA (Black IPA – 7.4%)
The Show Stopper – Engelszell Gregorius Trappistenbier (Abt/Quadrupel – 10.5%)
Listen to our Dare to Dream, Make a Meal playlist below: