[Sca-cooks] pounded meat slices

[chirhart_1]

Well the idea besides tenderizing is to end up with a larger piece to stick
way out side of the bun.If you started thin you wont get the effect
needed-Thinking outside of the bun.    From chirhart

(The idea was taken from a place in K.C. that sold only pork tenderloins for
lunch .The Hook was that the tender loins stuck 3 to 4 in. past the bun and
were so tinder they almost melted in your mouth .Plus the cooking time was
reduced.)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 4:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] pounded meat slices


> Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
> >Chirhart mentioned:
> >>Pork tenderloin cut thick pounded flat dipped in milk and egg.Then
dredged
> >>in flour and bread crumbs salt and pepper then deep fried in peanut oil.
> >>Served on a soft Italian bun with onion,tomato and lettuce and garlic
mayo.
> >
> >Okay, this sounds very like chicken-fried steak except with a different
meat.
> >I remember hearing mention of taking chicken breasts and pounding them
flatter
> >as well and I seem to remember my mother doing vener snitzel(sp?)
>
> Wiener Schnitzel, as in, Cutlet in the Vienna Style.
>
> >  this way. In
> >this case, why start with a thick slice of meat and then pound it flat?
Why
> >not just start with thinner sliced meat? Does the pounding tenderize it?
(my
> >expectation) or is this simply for appearance reasons?
>
> The pounding does tenderize it, by breaking down some of the fibers
> of connective tissue (also the meat itself, to some extent: as I
> believe Nicolo mentioned, it is akin to pre-chewing). In the case of
> some chicken-fried steak recipes that I've seen (yeah, I know we don'
> need no steenkeeng recipes for chicken-fried steak) there seems to be
> a technique whereby the steak is pounded, floured, then pounded
> again, to work the flour into the surface. These are the old ones
> where you use the edge of a saucer to whack the meat.
>
> As was pointed out by Isabella, another consideration is that, in a
> dish where you're going for a sort of pan-crusty effect, surface area
> is an issue, and this does make the slices larger. On the other hand,
> they also shrink in the cooking, so usually my own experience has
> been that what you end up with is not all that much larger than what
> you started out with, when all is said and done. But there's a small
> difference.
>
> >Do we have mentions of pounding meats flatter in the period documents?
>
> I could be wrong, as I don't have it in front of me, but I think that
> the faux birds made of veal leg slices in Taillevent, or one of the
> later descendants of that recipe, call for pounding. This sticks in
> my excuse for a mind because I remember that when I made them for 150
> people several years ago, I had the butcher slice my meat on the deli
> slicer, and remembered that that technique, apart from the obvious,
> was divergent from the original recipe. Maybe someone with the text
> handy could let us know.
>
> Adamantius