[Sca-cooks] menu planning for dietary restrictions

Anne-Marie Rousseau dailleurs at liripipe.com
Fri Aug 11 21:54:44 PDT 2006


Duriel tells us:

Here's a real-life example:  A while ago, I was helping out with a 
feast.  One of the dishes I was preparing was chicken cutlets breaded 
and fried, then baked with onions sauteed in wine (a decent bulk 
burgundy, as I recall) & oil, then topped with shredded cheese (and not 
a particularly flavorful cheese, mind you).


What a strange sounding dish! So it was breaded and fried and then baked
with a sauce (undoing the crispy bits from the frying, and likely
turning them all gooey?) I wonder if that was a period dish I've never
heard of, or something modern?

I guess for me, there's so many lovely period dishes out there that
would satisfy the same flavor niche (ie a chicken dish that is served
with a piquant sauce) and your'e right, any of them would be much lower
in fat than the one you describe. 

It sounds like something my dad would make. See, he's quebecois and has
some interesting ideas on what makes food good. A steak? Good. Smother
it in blue cheese? Better! Now top with fried onions? Even better! I
remember him teaching me how to make a fried egg sandwhich when I was a
girl. First, you make toast. Butter the toast. Then put on mayo. Fry
your egg in butter. Put the egg on the butter/mayoed toast. Pour any
residual butter from the pan onto the bread so it soaks it up. Dirty
about six pans to accomplish this. ;)

Did I mention his quadruple bypass a few years ago? ;)

Anyway, I think it might be a matter of taste. Personally the dish you
describe is not one I'd likely enjoy. Chicken baked in a wine sauce? Ok!
Chicken breaded and fried served with cheese? Not my thing so much.
Isn't tha chicken parmaseana? I wonder if they saved some steps by using
prebreaded frozen cutlets? The mind boggles.

Also, I would point out that a lot of newer feast cooks don't realize
that when you scale up you do NOT need to scale up the amt of oil it
takes to sautee onions, say. If it takes a tsp of oil to sautee an
onion, it will not take 20 tsp to sautee 20 onions. 

(ditto for butter. No matter what people try to tell you to the contrary
;))

-AM






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