Tag: panko

Gowing’s Veal Schnitzel with Egg and Mushroom

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 4

Gowings at its best, is a loud, brash and great Friday-afternoon steak joint in the middle of Sydney.

I mean, its food won’t win any awards, though that is sort of the point: t is just a bloody comfortable place to be after a bottle of red!

Nat and I had one memorable lunch where she ordered a veal schnitzel with a mushroom paste and a poached egg on top. My goodness, it was great.

Accompanying it was this cracker of an iceberg salad with ranch dressing.

This veal recipe isn’t their recipe though it is our recreation of it. I promise, it is absolutely on point.

Decant a good bottle of red and enjoy.

(And yes, the recipe does ask for a poached egg and the photo above is of a fried egg, though we were preparing a several courses for a Mexican-themed feast the next day, so mea culpa!)

Ingredients

For the veal

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 veal schnitzels
1 cup panko crumb
1/2 cup flour
3 eggs, beaten with 1 tbsp milk
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs
1 tbsp white vinegar
Lemon wedges to serve

For the mushroom paste

3 tbsp butter
750 mixed mushrooms
20gm porcinis
1/2 cup red wine
4 garlic, finely chopped
5 sprigs majoram, leaves finely chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Commence the mushrooms: put the porcinis in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to soak for 30 minutes. Draining, reserving the liquid.
  2. Meanwhile, remove the stalks from the mushrooms and pulse in a food processor toegther with the porcinis until well ground.
  3. Heat two tablespoons of butter over a medium heat in a heavy saucepan and add the mushrooms. Sauted for 10 minutes and then add the red wine and reserved porcini liquid.
  4. In a small saucepan, heat 1tbsp of butter over a low heat and then add the garlic. Fry until soft and then add the majoram and cook together until the garlic starts to golden. Add the garlic mixture to the mushrooms and season.
  5. Continue to cook the mushroom mixture, stirring regularly until almost all of the liquid as evaporated and you are left with a think, mushroom paste. Season.
  6. For the veal: Place flour, panko crumb and egg/milk mixture in three separate bowls. Season the panko. Flour the first veal schnitzel, then into the egg/milk wash and then finally into the panko crumb, ensuring that it is well coated. Repeat with the remaining veal schnitzel.
  7. Heat a pot with water until boiling and add the white vinegar: this is for poaching the eggs.
  8. Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan over a medium-high heat: you want to flash fry the veal rather than cooking it slowly. Commence pacohing the eggs as you cook the veal until golden on both sides.
  9. Plate the veal, pasting a think layer of the mushroom paste on top and finishing with the poached egg.

Spiced Tomato Bucatini with Panko Breadcrumbs

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 4

One of the cookbooks we picked up this Christmas was Saturday Night Pasta by Elizabeth Hewson, a self-taught home cook.

Her passion is clear.

Flicking through around 100 pasta recipes, she provides a wonderful introduction and background to the recipe. Nat and I both sat in the kitchen eyeing each receipt off, reading the background and saying, “yep, this is the one” until we flipped the page and it all started over.

We settled on this particular pasta and it was excellent.

The subtle Indian spicing is of course completely unusual, though as Elizabeth puts it, “the lesson here is don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

True that.

Ingredients

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half to release its flavour
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1 tbsp salted butter
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tbsp dry white wine
400gm can whole peeled tomatoes (I used cherry)
1/2 cup pouring cream
1/2 tsp caster sugar
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup panko breadcrumbs

If making fresh pasta (Half the book is given over to pasta making techniques.)

Maccheroni a descita, Pici.

If using dried pasta

Gnocchetti sardi, Bucatini.

Method

  1. Heat a deep frying pan over a medium-heat. Throw in the cinnamon, garam masala and cardamom pods and toast for 2 minutes or until fragrant. Add the butter, 1 tbsp of the olive oil, the garlic and give everything a good stir for about 30 seconds to until the garlic is soft – you don’t want it to burn.
  2. Pour in the white wine and watch it bubble and drink up the flavours for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cream, sprinkle over the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Give everything a big stir, then reduce the heat to low and leave to bubble away for 30 minutes, allowing the spices to imbue their flavours and the sauce to thinking.
  3. Bring a large saucepan to the boil and salt the water. Add the pasta and cook until al denote. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
  4. Heat a small frypan over a medium heat. Add the remaining 3 tbsp of olive oil and the panko crumb and cook until golden.
  5. When everything is ready, fish out the cinnamon stock and cardamom pods and throw in the drained pasta. Stir, adding a little pasta water if necessary.
  6. Divide into bowls, shower generously with the breadcrumbs and serve.