Cotolette with Zucchine and Fagiolini
Fried chicken, right. A lot of western cultures eat it, in all manner of ways; the humble Kiev, the southern fried grease, the Chinese lemon chicken. Chicken in some kind of flour based batter / bread or carb. In my opinion (as obviously would be the case) the Italians have nailed it with Cotolette. It ticks all the boxes: makes a small amount of meat go far, is easy to cook for a lot of people, works well cold and can be eaten in a sandwich. Its most commonly made with turkey, chicken or steak, but here I have made it with pork. Whichever meat, you should try and buy thin steaks. It means you will have to spend minutes rather than hours bashing the shit out of the meat. If you’ve got a face on, or had a bad day, buy a fat steak and bash till your heart’s content.
More and more folk are becoming conscious of how meat is produced. The best thing about serving meat in this way is that it does not demand a huge chunk of flesh on the plate – you won’t fucking believe how far four thinly-cut turkey steaks will go. WHY EAT MEAT ALL?!?!? I hear all the trendies cry. Well, this is a blog about food, about Italian food, and to cook purely vegetarian dishes would did severe injustice to the cuisine. There will be exclusively vegetarian dishes on here, heck I might even try a vegan dish. The point is that when meat is used – I am going to try and make small amounts go further, and feed more people. In short – still enjoy meat in a dish, but try and buy / cook / eat it sustainably.
So I am serving it with veg. Veg, yeah. Lush. Seriously, lush. Vegetables can be fucked with in all manner of ways. Here, the corgette is being fried with cherry tomatoes, garlic, cooking chorizo and fresh parsley. The green beans I am going to do a little more traditional – in lemon and oil. In southern Italy, it’s a common way of having green veg – again it’s good hot and cold. The fagiolini are from my Nonna’s friend Severino’s garden. Rumour on the street is that he brought the seeds back from Calabria and is causing some big hype in Gloucester allotments. Buying fresh green beans will work just as well, but don’t use frozen ones for this dish.
COTOLETTE
Thin Pork Steaks – 4 steaks / 6 People
Fine Breadcrumbs
Eggs
Veg Oil
It takes a bit of time, and is easier with a couple of people. But it is a piece of piss to do and is defo worth it. If you are a yuppie looking for something to cook in three and half minutes in order to impress the office go elsewhere. Or go get a restaurant to cook for you. You can probably afford it.
Put a CD on. I suggest cooking to this. Lovely vibes in the kitchen.
Get a chopping board. Layer like this: kitchen unit / chopping board / cling film / pork / cling film. You’ve got the world’s most disgusting lasagna on the go. Get yourself a rolling pin (or another blunt instrument). Proceed to bash the steak till about 75mm thick. You can have the pieces of meat any kind of size you like – I would suggest the size of a small paper back, so probably cut one steak in half, once you have bashed it up like. Whip up a couple of eggs and pour into a plate. Pour breadcrumbs onto a plate. Proceed (yeah, proceed) to coat your meat in the egg, then in the breadcrumbs and set it aside. REPEAT (Gordon Ramsey lingo yo).
Get yourself a frying pan and fill it with vegetable oil – about 2cm, so that it will pretty much cover the cotolette you are going to fry. Heat up yo oil. Test the heat with a few breadcrumbs – if they burn you have fucked it and you are a stronz. If they turn golden brown – sorted. Fry up all your steaks. Once you have fried one, but it on a plate. But layer it all up again. Cotolette / bit of kitchen towel / cotolette / kitchen towl. You get it. This will soak a lot of the oil from the meat and mean that it won’t be as greasy as your godfather’s combover. When you serve - stick them all on a new plate - minus the towels.
ZUCCHINE
Zucchine
Chorizo
Cherry Tomatoes
Garlic
Chilli
Fresh Flatleaf Parsley
Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
Well easy and proper tasty if you use the right amount of oil and garlic. In general, all of the recipes on this blog will use more garlic and olive oil than you think you need. But you need it. You defo do. Trust me and my bad breath. You want to oil to coat everything, not just fuck about at the bottom of the frying pan. So put enough in to thinly cover the bottom of the frying pan. For this I am using about 7 cloves of garlic. Chop up the cloves small, but they don’t need to dissolve into any kind of sauce here, so you don’t have to go mad. Add them to the oil and lightly heat it up. Add the chilli, this time as finely chopped as you can go (leave the seeds in or out to taste). Salt and pepper it all well. Chop up your zucchine into finger sized strips and add. Cook it all together for a couple of mins, coating the zucchine in the oil / garlic / chilli combo. Add the cherry tomatoes whole and the chorizo in fairly big chunks. Cook until the zucchine are soft but not sludge. Finely chop the parsley and add a couple of mins before serving. Safe (not Gordon Ramsey lingo).
FAGIOLINI
Fresh Green Beans
Lemon
Olive oil and Salt
Traditional and fresh as fuck. These are nice ones too - GL50 serious veg, so i am not going to mess with them too much - steam em. I like them quite crunchy but taste them as they steam and you’ll get the idea. Once they are steamed, leave them to go cold and drizzle with olive oil and half a lemon, before adding a little salt.
Eat it all with a little bread and a frozen stubby lager.
