Chicken Schnitzel with spinach-orange salad

By Connie

Ingredients

• For the salad:
• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• one half cup of egg substitute (you can use 2 real eggs, beaten, if you want)
• salt and pepper to taste
• One half cup of all purpose flour
• One cup of bread crumbs
• 2 Tbl of extra virgin olive oil (the traditional recipe would use lots of butter)
• 2 slices of Gruyere cheese (you can leave off the cheese if you want)
• parsley to garnish, minced
• 2 lemon wedges
• Baby spinach
• Red onion
• Orange segments (navel or mandarin)
• Your favorite vinaigrette
• Walnuts

Details

Servings 2

Preparation

Step 1

For the Schnitzel:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Put each chicken breast (one at a time) in a large plastic storage bag. Pound the meat down to a one quarter to one third inch thickness. You'll end up with a piece of meat the size of a medium, misshapen pancake. Take it out of the bag and set aside. Now do the same thing with the second breast half. Sprinkle both with salt and pepper.

On two rimmed plates, pour the egg substitute on one and the bread crumbs on the other.

Grab your plastic bag again and put in the flour. Place each chicken breast piece in the bag and toss it around so it gets coated with flour. As you take the chicken breast out of the flour, dip it in the egg on both sides and then dip it in the bread crumbs, again, on both sides. Set aside and do the other chicken breast.

Heat your olive oil in a large sauté pan. Place your coated chicken breasts in the hot oil and sauté on medium until a nice golden brown. Flip over and brown the other side. Then take the chicken breasts and put them, side by side, in a heat proof pan and place in the oven to bake for 15 minutes. The reason for doing this is to keep your chicken moist. You could have continued to cook the chicken on the stove in the sauté pan but it has a chance of getting too browned and even dried out. This way it stays nice and moist while you concentrate on making your salad. When the 15 minutes is up check the thickest part of the chicken breast to make sure there are no pink juices. You can just cut a little slot and pull it aside a bit and peek. It won't spoil the look of your dish. Then put on the cheese slice and let it sit in the turned off oven while the cheese melts. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with parsley. Serve with lemon wedge in case you want to squirt lemon over your chicken.

For the salad, you'll want a handful of spinach per person. I'm letting you decide the exact amounts of each of these items to your taste and hunger level. Slice the red onion very thinly and use some of the onion rings on your salad. Peel your oranges and break them into segments. (or take the mandarin oranges from the can and drain). Put the orange segments on the salad. Sprinkle with a few walnuts and drizzle on your favorite vinaigrette. (For this salad I used a high quality roasted red pepper vinaigrette).