Mission 5: Chicken Parmigiana

January 24th, 2010 Goombah Gourmet Chris

I realize that this post was supposed to be about bread. Let’s just say that my bread escapades did not go so well yesterday, so I’ll be returning to that tomorrow after I get another crack at it. In the meantime, on Friday night I made (among other things) chicken parmigiana, and it’s a great Italian meal that needs to be added to the Goombah’s bag of culinary tricks. We’ll talk about the bread thing later on (if I am not soundly defeated again, that is, and then I might just act as though it never happened).

I should start with the obvious: I really love Chicken Parmigiana. When I was a kid, it was one of my all-time favorites. My mom could whip up a fierce batch of it, and we’d be picking at it out of the refrigerator for days.  For many years, when I would go to an Italian restaurant, I always ordered it, no matter what else they had. Let’s just say I was a wee-bit provisional and didn’t like to branch out much as a younger Goombah. Chicken Parmigiana was good, and I wasn’t going to take any stupid chances while in a nice restaurant.

If you think about it, though, it’s a non-typical Italian food (or at least it strikes me that way). Yeah, it has all the basics (sauce, cheese), but still it always strikes me as a kind of cross between Italian food and southern food. What I mean by that is just this: when I think of my wife’s mom’s cooking (from southern Arkansas), all I think of is: oil, oil, oil, fry, fry, fry.  I’m surprised that the Corn Flakes don’t get deep fried at some point. Everything gets encased in a deep fry of some sort. Well, not much Italian food is cooked that way, but Chicken Parmigiana is. It’s just a piece of fried chicken with sauce and cheese added to it. So although I don’t think my wife’s parents are big on Italian food (not enough oil oil oil, fry fry fry and maybe even a bit too much spice), my guess is that they’d like this meal.

Before getting underway, a quick shout out to all you budding Goombahs out there: you can rest assured with this recipe. It’s not that hard to make and you can make a lot of it in one preparation. So you’ll have leftovers for wedges (that’s north NYC for sub or grinder or whatever the hell you yourself call it) later on.  It does have a high mess potential and the prep takes a while, but if you don’t want a mess, and you’re not willing to put in the time, you shouldn’t be cooking in the first place. Go to a restaurant.

I don’t have that choice. There are no Italian restaurants here in the midst of the Italian culinary dessert. If I want Italian food, I have to go and order a Chicken Parm dinner from Olive Garden or some other disgusting chain oriented place — you know, the ones where they heat up the pre-made frozen chicken breast patty (likely the crap kind that’s made with rib meat) and then top it off with a squirt of some nasty tasteless marinara sauce (likely Ragu with some extra basil thrown in), and then finished off with a slice of fake mozzarella (the type that turns off-white yellowish when it gets cold).

Ooh brother. Eat it up like there’s no tomorrow.

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What You’ll Need

1. Some thinly sliced chicken cutlets (however many you want to make).

2. Italian style bread crumbs

3. grated Romano cheese (you can use some cheap ass Parmesan if that’s all you have)

4. A few eggs (depends on how many cutlets you use: I’d use 1 per breast you cut up)

5. Some buttermilk pancake mix

6. A marinara sauce (that means you have to also make at some point my marinara sauce found here, either simultaneously, or from the previous night, or out of frozen storage).

7. Milk

8. Olive Oil

9. All purpose flour

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Regional Issues: Getting the Cutlets You Need

If I were in NY, I’d just go to the supermarket or the butcher and ask for thinly sliced chicken cutlets. It would be that simple and I could then skip this step and go right to the breading stage. Unfortunately, I’m not in NY, I’m in the Italian culinary desert. Now it could be that I shop in lousy supermarkets and deal with idiot butchers. I don’t know. But they don’t know what the hell a chicken cutlet is. They don’t prepare them for sale, and if you ask, you get a funny look. Last time I sent my wife she asked the butcher, and he gave her back a package of pulverized breasts. I mean they were annihilated. You couldn’t lift them up without them falling into small little pieces. So I had my wife use them for chicken chili (which actually came out goombalicious).

Anyway, I don’t ask them for cutlets anymore. I just do it myself. Unfortunately, unlike a professional goombah, who may have developed knife skills in other ways, I have no ability. I need to watch some cutting shows or something, because I’m bad. Still, the job needs to be done, and here’s what you need to do: take a chicken breast, hold it down on the cutting board with your palm, and use a very sharp knife and slice that bad boy through to try to get four cutlets out of it. Yeah, it’s not easy. The chicken doesn’t cooperate. Just keep trying. You’ll at least get two fat cutlets, but the object is to get four. I usually get three with some difficulty.  It’s alright, though: you just want thinner chicken, and the thinner the better.

Once you have your cutlets, give them a good sound beating to tenderize them. Just enough to flatten them out, mind you. Don’t be an idiot like my butcher and pulverize them so that they aren’t usable.

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The Easy Part: Breading the Cutlets

This part is easy. Take three deep dishes or containers and place inside

Container #1: an egg, beat well, and a little milk.

Container #2: a mix of italian bread crumbs and Romano cheese (more bread crumbs than cheese, obviously, maybe about 4:1)

Container #3: a mix of flour with pancake mix (4:1 again)

Okay, now:

1) take a cutlet and dip it in the milk/egg. Make sure it gets nice and soaked. Then put it in the flour/pancake. Make sure both sides are nicely covered. Then return it to the egg/milk again making sure it is saturated. Finally, move it to the crumbs/cheese making sure it’s nice and covered.

2) Repeat for all cutlets, placing them on a plate.

3. Let the plate sit for 30 minutes to allow the breaded love to settle in.

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Feeling Southern: Gettin’ Your Fry On

1. Add enough oil to a frying pan to make sure that your cutlets will wind up immersed, but not fully, when you put them in the pan. The oil should just go up the sides. It’s a half-deep fry.

2. Once the oil is hot, add the cutlets. As soon as the side is brown, flip it. As soon as both sides are brown, shake off excess oil and put it on another plate.

3. Repeat until they are all done.

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Turning a Southern Dish Italian: Fried Chicken to Chicken Parmesan

At this point, you’re home free. First, boil some water and toss in the pasta you’ll be eating with this meal. Once you have the pasta in the pot, finish up the cutlets.

1. Take a pan and put tin foil down in it, and then rub some of the marinara sauce over the foil. Then place the cutlets on the foil, putting liberal amounts of marinara on top of the cutlets. Then follow up by placing sliced mozzarella on top of the sauce.

2. Turn oven up to 350.

3. Place in cutlets, wait about 20 minutes or until the cheese is nicely melted.

4. Pull out cutlets, put on plate with the pasta on the side.

Eat.

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FINAL RESULTS: Presentation: 8, Goombaliciousness: 9

Some meals are easy to mess up. This is not one of them. Any beginner can pull this off easily. I knew it came out good, by the way, because one certain little girl (Wee P) kept wanting more and more, basically double fisting those pieces of fried Italian goodness into her mouth over and over. That’s what the Goombah likes to see. Don’t ask about Big P. She refuses to eat Italian food for the most part, and sticks to grilled cheese. That’s the subject for a whole different post, though.

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