Schnitzel

When Abba went on a low fat diet in his 40's, he wouldn't eat any chicken skin or dark meat, so schnitzel became the chicken prep of choice. The thinner the chicken breast, the better. You can buy them thinly sliced at House of Kosher, or slice thick chicken breasts into thinner slabs. They cook faster, and the portions are smaller. When we have company, I have learned that people will take a big chunk and leave a lot of it, so smaller portions seem to help people take what they can eat. Partially frozen chicken is easier to slice, by the way.

There's no recipe for schnitzel, it's really just a technique. One egg is about right for 1½ lbs of chicken, but chicken breast usually don't come in that amount, so you generally are short on eggs. These freeze well, so it's handy to make extra.

For Passover, you can use matzah meal seasoned with whatever you have.  You can use matzah meal during the rest of the year, too, obviously.

1 to 2 lbs. chicken breast - I prefer thin-sliced if you can find them.
Olive oil
Egg
Dijon mustard*
Flavored (parve) bread crumbs (or matzah meal)
Lemon and parsley for garnish

• In a large flat non-stick fry pan, add ~ one T of olive oil and heat over medium.
• Take 2 flat bowls.  Break an egg in one and beat lightly.
• Fill the bottom of the other with a small mound of bread crumbs.
• Put the package of chicken breast (chicken is grown in packages, right?) on a large plate, with the egg dish closer to the chicken.  
• Dip each cutlet in the egg, covering both sides.  
• Then drop it in the breading, turning it over, so the crumbs cover both sides.  

*One beaten egg is often a little scant for 2+ lbs of chicken breast. I recently read an odd book called "Recipes of Holocaust Survivors" and one of them adds Dijon mustard to the egg. This works well. Less than a teaspoon.

Set it in the hot frying pan.  It cooks fastest in the center, so start by putting the cutlets around the perimeter.  Depending on the size of your pan and the amount of chicken you may need a second pan. I didn't buy a second pan until I was about 50 years old, so hope you catch on quicker.
Fill the pan and brown the schnitzel.  The first side takes longer. They absorb a lot of oil, so you may need to add more to the pan before you flip them.  If you make them smaller, you have chicken nuggets, more or less, much less junky than the packaged kind.

Miriam Leventhal, Doda Rochelle's mother and truly one of the worlds tsadikot, taught me a trick when she visited us once in New York.  If you have extra egg and extra breading, you can combine them and make a little pancake, which she called a latkelah.  Just fry it along with the schnitzel. Make like it's a treat, some kid will eat it!

But lately I tried an experiment - I toasted the leftover breading in the 2nd frying pan, tossing the cooked schnitzel together in fry pan #1.  You don't need even keep the burner on. The breading absorbs the oil left in the pan, and just toss it evenly and let it cook.  I froze a small jar of browned breading and just added it to rice to get rid of it. It was great! It adds a crunch to the rice.

Lemon slices are a nice touch, but it doesn't seem like people actually use them, so don't worry if you don't have them!

When it's just David and me, I almost always make us chicken schnitzel. We have had them 100s of times and never get tired of them. They are great cold, for shabbat meals.