If you find yourself with a limited budget (perhaps after a splurge on some imported beers) and suddenly hungry, there are a few recipes - sort of - you can use to feed yourself. If you are lazy, this may be especially helpful.
3 Pork Cutlets
- Find leftover rice in your refridgerator. Note to yourself it's there; forget in 15 minutes.
- Take out pork cutlets (mine have been in the fridge, bottom shelf where it's sufficiently cold, for 2 days by this point) and give them a rinse to freshen them up. Then lay them out on a cutting board, or wherever.
- Break an egg into a small bowl, whisk lightly; you can use a fork, because a washing a whisk afterwards is a pain.
- Add salt (I only have sea salt, but you may have more varieties), red and black pepper, thyme and a shake of basil (I say shake, because I assume if you're reading this you don't like cooking enough to have a bouquet of fresh basil leaves in a small jar on your kitchen counter). Mix until all ingredients look like a view through a kaleidoscope.
- Take out extra seasoning - I use more of the basil and garlic powder (because can't be bothered to peel cloves of garlic), you will use it to season the cutlets before they hit the pan.
- Take a few tablespoons of flour and spread them out on a big plate. The plate should have elevated edges if you're clumsy.
- Take cutlet # 1 and dip it into the egg yolk. At this point you should remember that you need to fry this on a surface, so obtain a surface, preferably nonstick and warm it up.
- Back to cutlet # 1: Jiggle it around in the yolk, then move to the flour and put face down on the plate, first on one side and then on the other.
- Note that your cooking surface is getting very hot. Pour olive oil, potentially too much. Have paper towel on hand to absorb the excess. Lower the heat to um, low.
- Quickly move cutlet # 1 from the flour to the pan (let's call the frying surface that, it's a 3-letter word: easy). Now glance back to the operating table and see you have forgotten to add the extra seasoning. Normally I'd let it go, but it may just be worthwhile adding the garlic powder. Sprinkle basil and garlic powder on top of cutlet # 1 already in pan. Sprinkle only on the side facing up, as flipping it yet would be too messy.
- Repeat steps 7, 8 an 10 with cutlet # 2 and cutlet # 3 (don't get a new hot surface for every cutlet) with one adjustment. Now that the pan is on the stove, you are less distracted and can remember to sprinkle cutlets with garlic and basil at some point after they have been dipped in yolk and before they land in the pan.
- If you have any leftover veggies in your fridge that will soon go bad, now is the time to take them out. In my case it was celery.
- Wash them, dice them, and thrown 'em into the pan. If it's a non-stick pan, you may forget to stir, which is fine - people like us are the reason they make them.
- After about 7 minutes, peek at the bottoms of the cutlets. Cutlet # 1 should be a dark golden color down there. Flip it. Even though cutlet # 2 and cutlet # 3 are more raw, flip them also, because the pan was hotter by the time they were added... and otherwise, I might just forget.
- Repeat step 14. Then repeat step 15 with decreasing time intervals over the course of 12 minutes.
- Turn off the gas (I have a gas stove) and let the food absorb the remaining heat in the pan. Then after a few minutes, serve.
