What she’d tell you
Sunday dinner in every Polish house I have ever been in. The secret is not the frying: it is the milk the pork sits in overnight, which nobody outside Poland seems to know about.
What you need
Written for 4. Change that in the app and the amounts follow.
Tick things off as you get them ready.
Continue to the method ↓
How it goes
Cut the loin into four thick slices and beat each one out flat between two sheets of paper until it is about half a centimetre.
Mix the milk with the sliced onion, crushed garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Sit the pork in it, cover, and leave it in the fridge at least 3–4 hours: overnight is better.
Lift the cutlets out and pat them dry. Put the flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs in three separate dishes.
Take each cutlet through flour, then egg, letting the excess drip off, then breadcrumbs on both sides.
Melt the butter in a wide pan over medium-high heat and fry each cutlet 3–4 minutes a side until deep gold. Lower the heat if it is browning too fast.
Serve with a wedge of lemon, potatoes and something pickled.
If you haven’t got it
Pork Loin
chicken breast, butterflied and beaten the same way
Butter
lard, which is what my mother used and what it is meant to be
Keeping it
Two days in the fridge. Polish families eat them cold in bread the next day and so should you.
A dry pan over medium heat, three minutes a side. Never a microwave: the crumb goes soft.
