Cotoletta alla Milanese

One of the things that I remember most from watching The Sound of Music as a child, is the mention of wiener schnitzel.

Evidently foodies are born not made.

Now I can’t remember the exact context in which that Austrian dish is mentioned, but I remember being extremely curious about it and wanting to try it.

Years passed, we won’t go into exactly how many, and thoughts of wiener schnitzel left my head, returning only on that annual appointment with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. I still had no idea what it was, I think I imagined something wrapped in pastry or possibly I was confusing it with strudel! 

More time passed.  I got married, moved to Milan and life was good.

One Sunday morning my husband suggested that we go for a drive, *Lugano is only an hour away from here, you’ve never been to Switzerland, what do you say?*

I said yippee and hurray and off we went.

Lugano is a lovely town, a bit touristy, but lovely just the same and we had lunch in a restaurant on the lake.

I read through the menu and suddenly, my heart skipped a beat.

There it was staring back up at me – Wiener Schnitzel!

I was really excited! I pointed it out to my husband and (without even looking up from his menu) he asked me what it was.

What was it? 

I didn’t know - it didn’t matter! It was a famous dish! I’d wanted to try it my whole life! Couldn’t he understand what a big deal this was?!?

My husband, ever practical looked up at me and said, *So order it.*

 I did, I was feeling pretty smug and worldly, after all there I was in Switzerland having wiener schnitzel!

I saw the waitress coming towards us with plates in her hands.

She walked right up to our table and put a plate down in front of me.

Finally – I was about to discover that wiener schnitzel is …

breaded veal cutlet

and in this case it was served with fries.

(Seriously was I the only person on the planet that didn’t know this?)

Needless to say I was more than disappointed, especially since my husband’s dish looked so much more interesting than mine did.

I wish I could say that I learned an important lesson from that experience but the truth is that I didn’t learn anything, except that wiener schnitzel is just a Cotoletta Milanese that speaks German.

 

In Milan, the cutlet is also sometimes served *vestita*, which means *dressed*.

That means that it is served topped with rocket and cherry tomatoes.

Here I substituted veal with chicken breast and I *double dipped* the meat.   A trick I learned from my mother in law. The double coating prevents the meat from drying out and keeps it tender.

The process is simple, dip your choice of meat (veal, chicken, turkey pork) in a beaten egg then coat in bread crumbs, then dip in the egg again and coat with bread crumbs a second time.

Tricks I’ve learned from older relatives:

Add salt and pepper and fresh flat leaf parsley to the egg rather than directly on the meat.

A little bit of water added to the egg means you have to use fewer eggs in proportion to the amount of meat you need to coat. A good rule of thumb would be 15 ml (1 table spoon for every two eggs).

The double coating, as mentioned above is a good way to keep your meat moist and tender.

Make sure the oil is heated before adding the cutlets.  If the oil isn’t hot enough, the cutlet will soak up more oil before it starts to cook.

Leftover bread crumbs and egg can be combined, pressed into a patty and fried with the cutlets.  It’s tasty and nothing gets wasted.

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