Remember those schnitzels?

Schnitzel, served with mushroom sauce
and coleslaw

Yes, it’s been a while since we regularly wrote in this blog but maybe this is a sign of things to come… more yummy dinners to be shared and more entertaining reading for those faithful followers of It’s Not Aeroplane Food.

Nine years ago I had just begun an adventure that would last a year travelling around the world. I had no real plans except for three things: See Petra, go on the Sound of Music Tour, and work in Scotland. Amazingly enough I did get to do all of those things (obviously plus a whole heap more), but who would have thought that my year, and my whole life, would have been changed by one of those things.

On February 9, 2004, I was staying in Vienna with a friend of a friend of a friend (!). She helped me book my train to Salzburg and my accommodation at a youth hostel. On Feb 10^th I arrived in Salzburg and booked my Sound of Music tour for the following day. I sat in the common room part of the hostel too excited to return to my room and itching to be able to talk to someone in English about what I was doing. My ears pricked up at the sound of English being spoken from a guy asking the girls at the desk about classical music concerts. I was too chicken to say anything to him. That night I couldn’t sleep thinking I would sleep through my alarm and miss the tour. (I know, how much of a geek am I!)

I woke up on time, ate breakfast, got ready…. Then missed the bus!! Luckily the hostel people arranged for the bus to come back and get me (and another young girl). From there we picked up the rest of the tour group (all 3 of them) including Daniel from Melbourne – the guy asking about music concerts from my hotel.

By the time we saw the chateau of where the Baron von Trapp drank pink lemonade, where Maria and the kids fell out of the canoe and of course the gazebo, I had introduced myself to Daniel from Melbourne so that he could be in a photo with me pretending to dance like Liesl and Fredrick did. Needless to say the rest of the day was full of clichéd moments like when it began to snow we took photos of ‘snowflakes on eyelashes’ and at lunchtime we had ‘crisp apple strudel’, all the time while the Do Re Mi song sounded out loud in our mini bus.

Fast forward 9 years and Daniel from Melbourne and I are married with a 10 month old baby boy, Archie.

In honour of our meeting in Austria on February 11^th I thought I’d cook schnitzels for dinner. Unlike the traditional Weiner schnitzels, which are made from veal, I used chicken.

To make the perfect schnitzel:

1. Make your own breadcrumbs. None of this packet pre crumbed bread. Pfft! Make your own when you need to use them.

2. Bash out your chicken. Put a trimmed chicken breast fillet in plastic wrap and bash with a hammer – one of those cooking ones would probably be best, rather than any old one from the shed. Make sure that the fillet is an even thickness throughout – somewhere around 1cm.

3. Flour, Egg, Crumb. Coat the chicken first in flour, then in egg and then finally in the breadcrumbs you’ve just made.

4. Use a big chunk of butter and olive oil to cook the schnitzel. The butter makes it delicious, the olive oil prevents the butter from burning.

That’s it. It’s not tricky. But it’s the attention to detail that makes it perfect.

When I was in Vienna and had Wiener schnitzel, it arrived at the table as two massive schnitzels on a plate and that’s it. I think I remember ordered some kind of side dish that included vegetables of some sort, but basically it was just a plate of meat. For this meal, as it was about 33 degrees outside and only a few degrees cooler inside I decided to accompany the schnitzels with coleslaw.

This also worked well for a little side challenge we have going at the moment. A friend of Dan’s has been supplying us with a heap of fruit and vegetables from his garden and has wanted to see what we use them all in. Well, I put apple in the coleslaw. J

We also used some of these apples for the ‘crisp apple strudel’ that was for dessert. You can’t meet on the Sound of Music tour and not complete tacky clichéd meals!

Unfortunately, the actual lyrics from the Do Re Mi song stipulate ‘Schnitzel with Noodles’ but that’s just weird.  J

You can't have an Austrian meal
without an Austrian beer!

Happy Anniversary, Dan. xx