Crazy for Chicken Milanese
Or how to serve 2 people luxuriously with 1 chicken breast
Hello! In the words of Jeremy Corbyn: we’re back, and we’re ready for it all over again. I hope you have had a fulfilling start to the year, and that January brought you TLC and a sense of anticipation for 2025. Today’s recipe is a comforting and affordable dinner that feels just right for a Friday or Saturday night. I hope you dig it.
In my absence, I’ve been amazed and grateful to find out that there are now almost 2.5k of you here. Welcome to all my new subscribers and thank you for being here! If you weren’t here last year, January 2024 was Cheese Month and so I wanted to reshare my cheesy recipes here because there will surely be something to see you through the last of the dark, dank winter as well! They’re all vegetarian and all hearty as hell.
Baked Feta Eggs (a good weekend breakfast)
Leek, Cheese and Za’atar Pie (and an interview with comedian Aaron Chen)
On to today’s recipe…
January doesn't have to be a miserable start to the year, you just have to drown out the grumbles. I did this by eating enthusiastically and watching loads of good films at baby cinema – it’s Oscars season after all! A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, and Hard Truths were highlights. If you’d like to read my nonsense reviews on Letterbox they’re here. I also turned 32 at the end of the month and ate a delicious steak and clootie dumpling at Noble Rot to mark the occasion. So yes, January is A-OK from where I'm standing.
It turns out I took my break from the newsletter at just the right time, because my baby's sleep went from being quite okay to unfathomably challenging and has remained that way for the last 6 weeks. I've been surviving the 2 hour bedtimes, 8 cot transfer attempts, 4-5 wake ups a night and co-sleeping crick neck by eating an unhinged amount of sugar. My sanity has been challenged but my mood has been saved by Eli's laughter, new facial expressions and steadily strengthening muscles. That's my baby!
Tired bellies always feel more hungry, and require dinners containing plenty of carbs and protein. One such meal is today's recipe: Chicken Milanese. It’s a dish that I love to order in restaurants because it always feels like a treat, much like ordering a steak, a martini or oysters. I cooked this for me and Charles in November and have since become very fond of making it at home.
Why have I fallen for Chicken Milanese? Firstly, it's extremely well-suited to my ever-dwindling maternity leave budget – needing only 1 chicken breast to feed two people generously, and you can't say fairer than that in this economy. You won't even notice you've shared it. On top of the chicken this recipe only needs tinned tomatoes, some budget spaghetti and a few more store-cupboard ingredients I’m sure you'll already have in.
The second reason I love Milanese? It's secretly the best way to ensure a moist chicken breast – the breadcrumb crust stops the meat from drying by almost steaming the meat inside it, and brings its own pleasing crunchiness. The same can be said for its close cousin, schnitzel. Being Northern Italian, Milanese also has a slight Weiner schnitzel vibe because it’s traditionally fried in clarified butter which makes it heavenly rich. I’ve cooked it in a combination of butter and oil here to save the step of clarification (but if you have ghee at home, that would work great too). I hope you will treat yourself to this luxurious dinner. You're worth it.
Chicken Milanese with Spaghetti in Red Sauce
For the cutlets
80g flour
1 chicken breast
50g fine breadcrumbs
50g panko breadcrumbs
1/2 tsp herbes de Provence / oregano
25g grated parmesan or grana padano
90ml olive oil
60g butter
2 eggs
For the sauce (good news - you’ll have some leftover)
2 tins tomatoes
1 onion, halved
50g butter
40ml olive oil
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 basil spring, optional
To make the sauce for your spaghetti, add all of the ingredients together in a medium pan, stir well and season. Cook on a low heat for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. (I like to make more because if we’re simmering we may as well get our money’s worth).
To make the Milanese, place your flour in a wide bowl or large tupperware container and season it with salt and pepper. Crack the eggs into another wide bowl or tupperware container and season those with salt and pepper too. Finally, place the two types of breadcrumbs in a final wide bowl and season them with salt and pepper, the dried herbs and the parmesan.
On a chopping board, carefully cut the chicken breast in half with a sharp knife – use your non-dominant palm flat on top of the chicken breast to steady it. Then, bash both escalopes with a rolling pin (or a meat mallet) to flatten slightly further. Season the chicken.
Dip the chicken first in the flour mixture, then in the egg mix and finally in the breadcrumbs. Get a frying pan on a medium heat and heat up your oil and butter together. When the fat is hot enough that a breadcrumb sizzles when it’s added, place both breadcrumbed escalopes into the pan gently, with the meat entering the pan on the side that’s nearest to you and you lifting your hand away on the side furthest from you. Fry the meat until it’s golden brown, this will take about 3 minutes on each side, but it will depend on the strength of your stove.
Meanwhile, cook your spaghetti and toss it in just enough of your sauce to coat well. Serve the chicken next to a tangle of the red spaghetti and garnish with grated parmesan or grana padano. I like eating it with a steak knife to cut through the crispy chicken, it gives me that restaurant feeling. You can also squeeze some lemon over the chicken to serve if you like. Enjoy!
I never thought I’d be the type of person who needs to have a cake or biscuits in the house at all times. But feeding another tiny human with your body every day will do that to you. This month my sweet treat highlights were:
Smitten Kitchen’s applesauce cake (new favourite)
Smitten Kitchen’s ‘I want that chocolate cake’ (the GOAT, I topped it with leftover tiramisu cream and sour cherries)
Nicola Lamb’s tiramisu (first time I’ve made this dessert, a very enjoyable process)
Recipe Tin Eats’ fluffy blueberry pancakes (old favourite)
A batch of my lactation cookies
Taking bets on how many fillings I will need at the dentist by the end of the year…
Savoury highlights this month (seen above) were Matty Matheson’s mortadella and olive chicken broth from his new Soups, Salads, Sandwiches cookbook, as well as Ottolenghi’s mejadra served with roasted red mullet, tomatoes and chilli sauce.
1 year ago… Childhood Pepper Chicken
2 years ago… Winter Lasagne
See you next time for a pie recipe that might be one of my proudest pie accomplishments.
