After previously having made Chicken Parmigana and Penne alla Vodka, I figured I’m on a roll and should continue shaping my culinary skills. Who knows when they’ll be handy in the future?
In choosing my next dish, I encountered a challenge. What was I to prepare next?
Popular opinion around my household led me towards lasagna or meatballs. I had a problem with this — all my meals thus far have been Italian… and I wanted to cook something different. Not that Italian food is a bad thing, I loves my Italian food.
Through the suggestion of a rather trusted Brit, I decided to try Tonkatsu (Japanese for deep-fried pork). Since I’d never even heard of Tonkatsu, I thought it’d be the kind of meal I was looking for.
After searching through the internet for a recipe, I stumbled across this one at About.com:
Ingredients:
4 slices pork loin or fillet
1 beaten egg
1 cups panko (bread crumbs)
1/4 cup flour
vegetable oil for deep frying
salt and pepperCooking Tonkatsu:
1. Put salt and pepper in the pork.
2. Lightly coat the pork with flour and pat them.
3. Dip the pork in the egg.
4. Coat the pork with bread crumbs firmly.
5. Leave the breaded pork in the refrigerator for 30 min before cooking.
6. Heat vegetable oil in a deep pan to 320F.
7. Fry the pork slowly until golden brown.
Looked simple enough. In fact, except for panko in place of Italian bread crumbs and pork in place of chicken, this is the exact same procedure I followed for the fried chicken cutlets in the Chicken Parmigana.
The end result is as follows:
Now, I’ve never had Tonkatsu at a real Japanese restaurant before, but I’m assuming that my pieces were a tad on the big side. Next time they’ll certainly be smaller.
Whereas I thought the end result tasted pretty damn good, I guess I’m going to go have to order it at a Japanese place to verify that it did, in fact, make it correctly.
