my german dish - weiner schnitzel

In my quest to learn German, I have recently been going though the common food and drink vocabularies. There is nothing more motivating than taking a food and drink break when you are sloughing though a rather challenging language for an Asian mother tongue. While I am not a stranger to German sausages, I have been reading up on those I have not explored, or only know the English names. Soon I want to try making many, from different regions.

I went shopping yesterday and I set out to pick up ingredients to make some German food. I wanted to make Leberkäse and Schweinshaxe. Making Schweinshaxe (German roasted pig knuckle) requires a whole raw pig ham hock. I know an Asian supermarket I can find them. A lot of Asian stores sell ham hock, but the problem is they are already been cut into inch thick slices.

Schweinshaxe (photo by Rainer Zenz)

i went to this Asian supermarket where i know i can find whole raw ham hock

Leberkäse is a meatloaf made with veil, pork, and sometimes with liver. Leberkäse directly translates as liver (leber) cheese (käse). As I read up more on German sausages, Interestingly, when you add cubes of cheese to Leberkäse, it is called Käseleberkäse. I leant that a very common technique is to turned the finely ground meat mixture into an emulsion.

While I was buying the meat for the Leberkäse I saw the thin slices of precut pork chop. They are only about 1/2 inch thick. I immediately think of try making Vienna schnitzel. I picked up 4 slices which weighted in exactly 1 pound. To be precise, Weiner schnitzel traditionally should be made with veal. Schnitzel made with pork is called Schnitzel nach Weiner Art (schnitzel prepared after the Vienna method).

It is also worth mention that Japanese has embrace a similar dish imported from the West - called tonkatsu.

I didn't bother to go online to find a recipe. I thought how hard can it be so I let my intuitions be my guide and conceive the recipe in my head. I already know the key technique of pounding the meat to tenderize it and to flatten it so it cooks very fast. The thinness also make the rather fatty meal feel much lighter to the mouth.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2-inch pork chop
• 1 egg
• enough flour to dust the chops
• bread crumbs or panko
• salt and freshly ground pepper

Trim off the bone of the chop if any. Layer with plastic food wrap on top and bottom of each piece of pork chop. Pound the meat to tenderize it as well as to reduce the thickness to about 1/4-inch thick. This nearly double the area of my 1/2-inch chops. I used my maple wood rolling pin and it worked really well. I think it work better than a meat pounding implement with a big flat surface.

before flatten

after flatten - the area about doubles

Season the flatten chops with salt and freshly ground black pepper. It is ok to just season one side to save time due to the thinness of the meat. Dust both side of the meat with flour. I do this in the sink. Beat 1 egg in a shallow bowl big enough that you can coat the meat. Prepare in another shallow bowl enough panko to coat the meat. The egg and panko only to be applied just before you put the chops into the hot oil.

I used the beef tallow that I rendered from cow bone over a year ago. This tallow is infinitely better than the readimade ghee I recently bought. I used a small French steel pan to fry the schnitzels. I fried them one piece at a time. To keep the first piece piping hot when served I re-fry it a few seconds.

this amazing fragrant tallow was rendered mostly from cow bone marrow

just don't tell your cardiologist you cooked with it

The schnitzels turned out exactly like I imagined. I have never had properly prepared schnitzel before.

the result exceeded my expectation, thanks to the bone marrow tallow - they are tender and moist on the inside, and crispy and light outside

While in Berlin a few years ago, I had a chance to try out real Weiner Schnitzel at an Austrian restaurant where most of the patrons were ordering nothing else. I didn't because I opted for a 8-course dinner with each plate paired a different Austrian and German wines.

I skipped the mashed potato or French fries because I firmly subscribe to excess starch and sugar is the key cause of most people's overweight.

this plate i prepared for the second meal

Only after the meal that I went online to read up on the recipes (I typically look at a few). Sure enough my intuitions were right on the money. Out of this one pound of chops, I made two meals.

I am ready to test my hands on making Leberkäse and Schweinshaxe.

leberkäse - photo by Rainer Zenz

In closing, some of my more cultivated reader might ask - WTF, what does Weiner has to do with Germany? To me, being a student of history, culturally and historically, Austria (Österreich) might as well be a part of Germany.