Schnitzel with panko breading and German potato salad

(Skip to the schnitzel recipe or the potato salad recipe.)

Just before Christmas, I took a trip to Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Town squares, that time of year, are magical places. Christmas markets abound, the smell of mulled wine and grilling meat saturating the air.

Aside from trying to sample the rich multitude of sausages, at the top of the list was to have an authentic, Viennese schnitzel. Vienna did not disappoint but the potato salad that came with it, a central part of the experience, was revelatory.

Instead of being made with mayonnaise, the potato salad served with schnitzel is made with oil – vegetable, canola or another relatively flavorless oil. The cut potatoes are also soaked in beef broth and vinegar, mixed in with a bit of mustard.

Being a German potato salad, other versions add cooked bacon, and the bacon fat in addition to oil. I’ve stuck with mustard, vinegar and vegetable oil.

Salty, tangy, cut with a little lemon juice, the combination is a perfect addition to the weekday rotation and doubles as a great meal to serve guests to a small dinner party.

It can also be fun for kids, as the meat (chicken, veal, pork, mutton) needs to be thoroughly pounded until thin before being pan fried. I use the back of a Chinese butcher’s knife (extra wide for tenderizing) to pound the meat thin.

In Vienna, the schnitzel was somewhat puffy and most recipes call for using breadcrumbs, either store bought, or with multi-page instructions to turn stale bread into breadcrumbs. Often times referred to as “wiener schnitzel,” it’s a reference to schnitzel made in Vienna (“Wien” in German).

At home, I use panko (a type of Japanese breadcrumbs readily available at the grocery store) and season the meat with lemon pepper and a little garlic salt.

Many recipes also call for filling a Dutch oven or similar vessel with oil to deep fry, or nearly deep fry, the schnitzel. Instead, I pan fry in a cast iron skillet. Perhaps the most important thing to understand when cooking the schnitzel, especially with pork or veal, is to not overcook it. Nothing quite beats a juicy bite of a perfectly seasoned pork schnitzel, especially with a little lemon on top. I slice a lemon thin, then chop those slices, to eat the rind with the schnitzel.

Making the schnitzel itself is pretty easy. Pound the meat thin, dredge in flour, in egg, in panko, and pan fry.

The potato salad takes a little bit longer, with some resting time, it is also pretty easy. Plus, you can add the potato salad to the roster of things to bring to barbeques when the summer hits.

One of the most popular variations is the Jägerschnitzel, or hunter’s schnitzel. In this version, the fried meat cutlet is covered with a mushroom gravy. Covering schnitzel with sauce is a thing – the problematically named Zigeunerschnitzel, or “Gypsy” schnitzel, with a tomato, bell pepper and onion sauce, while in Munich, it’s covered in horseradish and sweet mustard. I also found a thick beef gulash (essentially a red-wine based beef stew) also works as a great topping sauce.

Getting really fancy is the schnitzel cordon bleu, with slices of ham and cheese stuffed inside the meat.

Schnitzel

Ingredients

4 small boneless pork chops, steaks or chicken breasts

Salt and pepper

Lemon pepper

Garlic salt

½ cup flour

2 large eggs, beaten

¾ cup panko or breadcrumbs

Oil for pan frying

Lemon slices or wedges for garnish

 

Directions

Pound the meat cutlets until thin, about ¼ of an inch thick. Lightly season the meat with lemon pepper if desired.

Cut lemon into slices or wedges for serving.

Mix in a little salt (garlic or otherwise) and lemon pepper into the flour. Separate the eggs, flour and bread crumbs into three shallow bowls.

Heat the oil in a medium to large skillet over medium heat.

Dredge a chop first in the flour, then in the egg, and then in the panko.

Put the chop into the pan and lightly pan fry, 2-3 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Try not to overcook.

Serve with the potato salad and lemon slices/wedges.

 

German potato salad

Ingredients

3 pounds Yukon Gold or white potatoes

1 white or yellow onion, chopped

½ red onion, chopped

1 ½ cups beef broth (or bullion)

½ cup white vinegar

Salt to taste

1 ½ tablespoons spicy mustard

1/3 cup oil

Directions

Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender, or pressure cook for 2 minutes.

Allow the potatoes to cool and then, if desired, peel. Slice the potatoes into ¼ inch slices. Put the slices in a large bowl.

In a saucepan, add the beef broth, vinegar, chopped white or yellow onion, mix, and bring to a boil. Once it boils, remove from heat, then pour over the potatoes and mix a couple of times.

Allow the potatoes to sit in the broth for an hour.

Stir in the oil and lightly salt to taste or, refrigerate and serve and salt the following day for better flavor.

 

 

Roasting revelations

It was not until I lived in Germany that I discovered roasting. It started out innocently enough, with the topic of this cooking column: cauliflower.

It quickly progressed to all sorts of root vegetables I didn’t even know existed or only had peripheral contact with: kohlrabi, rutabega, mangelwurzel, beets and all sorts of other in-ground vegetables. We even had purple carrots. They are a thing.

I was living and working as an au pair: a nanny with more responsibility and less pay who lives with the family. A good portion of my day was cooking dinner for the family which meant I was responsible for using the produce that came to us once a week in a green milk crate, filled with mostly-local vegetables. Since we were in Dresden, that meant bushels, or at least, parts of bushels, of root vegetables with a few delicious apples thrown in and a banana or two.

When the family told me the name of a white-fleshed vegetable with a waxy outer skin, I was incredulous. I went straight to my German-English dictionary and looked it up. Sure enough, there kohlrabi was, staring straight back at me. Same word, same vegetable. The problem was not with the name or with the word: it was with my own exposure to the wider world of white-fleshed edibles.

Photo by Wheeler Cowperthwaite for the Nevada Appeal. The key to roasted cauliflower is in some salt, some pepper, some olive oil and an uncrowded baking sheet.

Wheeler Cowperthwaite/Nevada Appeal.
The key to roasted cauliflower is in some salt, some pepper, some olive oil and an uncrowded baking sheet.

I started roasting with the cauliflower by cutting up the florets, tossing them with olive oil, salt and pepper. I would line the baking pan with parchment paper, one of my favorite things.

From cauliflower, I moved on to the other vegetables at our disposal. Instead of allowing them to sit for weeks on end, unused, I would , depending on the vegetable, skin them, cut them into equal-sized slices, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and then roast. Those others were the aforementioned beets and rutabagas, mangelwurzel and kohlrabi.

One of the problems I had, and I’ve received emails from readers expressing the same after having tried the recipe, is the cauliflower is gone too quickly. I would start putting the meal on the table and by the time I had sat down, most if not all of the cauliflower would be gone.

There are a few considerations when roasting veggies like these. The first goes to the oven. Each oven is vastly different and there are no be-all end-all instructions for how one’s oven works. I know my (electric) oven needs to be cranked up much higher than my friend’s gas oven. In Germany, I always had a problem with getting hit by steam accumulating in the oven. With my own oven, I have no such issues, although that could partly be due to placement in relation to my own face.

Cauliflower and other vegetables should be turned, at least once, through the roasting process so they do not burn on one side. Other special attention should be paid to the thickness of root-vegetable slices: they should be uniform. If they are not, one should expect to pull some of the pieces out before others.

 

Ingredients

• 1 head cauliflower

• Olive oil, enough to lightly coat the florets

• Salt

• Pepper

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 (range: 400-450) degrees Fahrenheit

1. Strip the cauliflower of its remaining green leaves and then cut up the cauliflower, into florets of desired size.

2. Put florets into a large mixing bowl. Pour olive oil over. Toss to coast. Put salt, pepper on the florets. Toss.

3. Put the florets, in a single layer, on a parchment-paper covered baking sheet.

4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until cauliflower is of desired crispness and is browned. Consider turning the cauliflower mid-way to prevent burning. Time will increase, as will steam, if more than one baking sheet is being roasted at a time.

5. Serve and don’t, like me, grab the metal with bare hands. That’s just dumb.

This recipe, although not the column, was originally published in the Nevada Appeal on April 24, 2013.