Food Friday: Chicken Schnitzel

I’m not quite ready to get into all the fussy details of holiday baking just yet. Though I am reading the many, many stories that abound about cookies and other holiday bakes. I will probably fall back on the usual suspects: my grandmother’s gingersnaps, some butter cookies (I bought a new cookie press – and we know it is all about the toys!) and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, because years ago our children eschewed the somewhat healthier oatmeal raisin cookies. We have very strong opinions about food in our house. Here is a recipe I intend to try out – it sounds too outrageous to ignore: Bacon Fat Gingersnaps! https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017041-bacon-fat-gingersnaps

But back in the kitchen, I was searching for the solution to a non-holiday cooking dilemma. We gave up veal years ago. I suppose it is possible to overthink everything, but our views about how animals are raised have been validated by the newer proponents of humane treatment of animals. That being said, sometimes we missed the crispy goodness of weiner-snitzel and the richness of veal marsala, and made up our own recipes substituting chicken cutlets for the veal.

Last weekend I had half of a pound of thin chicken cutlets that I bought from the butcher’s shop, which was a pricey food investment. Otherwise you can buy thin boneless chicken breasts at the grocery store, and pound them thin, using up your pent-up holiday aggressions and a sturdy rolling pin. Sometimes we managed to meet our schnitzel-ly ideals, and sometimes we miss. We had dubbed our feeble and ever-evolving concoctions “Chicken Schnitzel”, thinking we were oh, so clever. And with the expensive butcher cutlets I did not want to chalk up another miss, so I rooted around the Internet looking for a recipe that would save the day. I typed “chicken schnitzel” into my browser, and imagine my surprise when Thomas Keller’s recipe for “Panko-Coated Chicken Schnitzel” was the first that bounded into sight! More validation!

Sometimes I am a lackadaisical cook. I can go overboard and over-bread the chicken, so reflexively, among the misses there has been a long-running series of chicken misadventures. I have tried preparing schnitzel-ly chicken that I soaked in milk and then dredged in salt and pepper seasoned flour before frying. It was light, but it wasn’t a crispy schnitzel. Sometimes I have used plain breadcrumbs, or seasoned breadcrumbs. Sometimes I dipped the chicken in mayonnaise and then coated it with smashed up canned fried onion rings. Sometimes I read the backs of too many packages.

Thomas Keller’s recipe for Chicken Schnitzel was everything I hoped for. The brown butter and lemon caper sauce was perfect for adding a sweet nuttiness, without wilting the snappy panko crunch. We also had a side of creamy risotto and a small green salad along with candlelight and cheap white wine. And it was fast and easy to prepare – the cooking time for the chicken was only about 15 minutes. The risotto, which I can never gauge correctly, took about half an hour. Luckily, for once I had factored that in, and actually prepared it ahead of the chicken. It sat warming on the stove while I flipped the cutlets with skill, aplomb and many splatters. Add this to your easy peasy file: https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/panko-coated-chicken-schnitzel

Next week we will get to holiday baking, really.

“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”
― M.F.K. Fisher