Opinion – Recipes from Marcão: Learn how to make a dry and crispy chicken parmigiana

Giving recipes from all the World Cup countries, I already knew at the beginning, involves exploring certain cuisines unknown in Brazil.

Australia, for example.

No, in Australia you don’t eat brown bread and fried giant onions. This is the invention of an American restaurant chain that pretends to be a kangaroo.

Australia is a former English colony that is reasonably close to Asia. There’s British fish and chips and meat pie, there’s also Singapore noodles, Thai curries and such.

The most internationally famous Australian dish is a sweet: pavlova. It is a baked meringue, a sigh with fruit syrup. Something that is beyond my repertoire and my skills in the kitchen.

Luckily, I discovered that an extremely popular food in Australia is our old acquaintance parmigiana. Here we prefer it with steak, there they like it better with chicken.

I’ve always heard that filet parmigiana is a Brazilian invention, almost an aberration, because in Italy they only make it with eggplant – and, to confuse matters further, the dish (named after Parma, in the North) is typical of southern Italy.

If it’s true, several other people have had the same idea in several other places. In the US, they make veal parmigiana. In Argentina, there is the wonderful geographical-culinary chaos of the Neapolitan Milanese. And in Australia there’s chicken parmigiana, documented in local cuisine since the 1950s.

The “parma” is pub food in Australia. It’s “comfort food”.

The recipe for parmigiana varies very little from country to country. Anywhere, the challenge is to keep the crust crunchy – and the vast majority fail miserably in this regard.

In order not to soak the breading, you will need to take the tomato sauce very lightly. And add it only at the end, on top of the cheese that is already melted.

Australians like their “parma” with fries and salad. You can replace the leaves with rice. Or do it as in the Northeast of Brazil, accompany it with pasta. Australia is too far away to cling to purisms with a bastard dish.

permegiana chicken

Yield: 2 servings

Difficulty: medium

INGREDIENTS

2 chicken breast or thigh fillets (approximately 100 g each)

1 clove of garlic

1 cup of wheat flour

1 egg

1 cup of breadcrumbs

Oil for frying (as much as you need)

100 g of mozzarella

4 tablespoons of tomato sauce

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

Salt, pepper and basil to taste

PREPARATION

1. Heat the oven to maximum temperature
2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
3. In a pan or frying pan, place a layer of about 1.5 cm of vegetable oil. Heat over low heat for about 5 minutes.
4. Assemble 3 deep plates side by side: 1 with the wheat flour, 1 with the lightly beaten egg and 1 with the breadcrumbs.
5. Dip each chicken fillet first in the flour, then in the egg, and finally in the breadcrumbs. Fry one fillet at a time until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and set aside.
6. On a platter or roast, place the fillets and, on top of them, the chopped or grated mozzarella. Put in the oven for 5 minutes. Spread the sauce and Parmesan over the melted cheese. Return to the oven to finish browning.
7. Serve with the accompaniment of your choice.