This is a recipe I meant to bring over from the old site but I forgot to do it until now. I copied it over and improved it a bit…and so gave it a new date of now instead of 2005.
The recipe is for turkey. I think it’s good because I made it once for a friend who doesn’t like turkey, and he ate a pound of it. For years after his wife at the time made the recipe with chicken and called it “Pete Su” chicken. I think I got the original version out of one of the Frugal Gourmet cookbooks, which now have their own sort of fraught history. I’ve noodled with it a bit over the years. But the basic scheme is the same.
But all that aside this is good. So collect these things:
Turkey breast cutlets, sliced thin. You can have the store do this for you, since it’s hard to carve raw turkey breast unless you are a real man, as opposed to me.
2 eggs, beaten and mixed with tepid water in a bowl.
1/2 cup flour.
1/2 to 1 cup bread crumbs mixed with salt and pepper (and cayenne if you want). I use half packaged bread crumbs and half panko. This makes the result a sort of poor man’s katsu.
Cooking oil.
1/2 lemon.
White wine, capers, butter, garlic if you want.
Put the flour on one plate and the bread crumbs on another plate with the egg mixture in the middle. What you are going to do is first dredge the cutlet in the flour so it’s coated. Then run it through the egg mixture. The egg will stick to the flour. Then roll it around in the bread crumbs… and you get a nice evenly coated piece of meat.
Here is the scheme for each pass:
Heat a frying pan (carbon or stainless steel is the best for this) and put in a tablespoon or so of oil.
Take a piece of turkey and go flour, egg, breadcrumbs to bread it. Put it in the pan. If your pan can fit two pieces of turkey do this two at a time. Make sure there is enough room in the pan to move the food around though.
Cook the turkey for 3 or 4 minutes per side or until they are done. They should get nice and brown on each side. Put the cooked turkey on a sheet pan in a warm oven.
Repeat this process, adding a bit of new oil for each batch, until you are out of cutlets. If too many stray bread crumbs and up burning in the pan, clean it out between passes.
When all the turkey is done and in the oven get a smaller sauce pan and melt a bit of butter in it. Then mix in some white wine. Then squeeze the juice from 1/2 of the lemon into the pan. Throw in 2 spoonfuls of capers, salt, pepper and garlic if you have it. Mix it around. Reduce a bit. Then add another cold piece of butter and melt it in.
The original recipe said to “deglaze” the frying pan. But there is never anything in the frying pan except burnt bread crumbs. So I gave that up.
Serve the turkey with the sauce on top. Goes well with sauteed spinach or other greens and the bread, rice or pasta of your choice.
You can use this basic breading/frying scheme for all kinds of things. I do it with fish filets a lot and we call the result “chicken fish”. Surely thin pieces of chicken or pork would be great too.
I bet firm tofu would also work, if you are into that kind of thing.