Today I made a dish I saw on TV over the weekend, and the result was fantastic, far beyond what I had hoped. It was for a Mexican Milanese style sandwich, or torta. This is one of the rare times I have followed a recipe to the letter and been very pleased.
The first step is the chilpotle mayonnaise. Depending on where you live, the hardest part is finding chipotles in adobo sauce, but once you crack that you are home free. You will want to take about this much mayo ...
Then add one whole chilpotle with a little of the sauce, and mash it all up with the juice of half a lime, and some salt and pepper. It will end up a lovely pink colour and have that smoky taste of the chilpotle. The cool thing about mashing it up with a spoon instead of blending it is that in the finished sandwich you are going to get little nuggets of chilpotle scattered around.
Next, you prepare your chicken cutlets. I used one skinless chicken breast and it was more than enough for three cutlets. You want to take a piece of the raw chicken and hammer it flat until it is very thin and about this size.
After that, you follow a simple three-bowl dredge of seasoned flour, egg, and seasoned breadcrumbs. I also seasoned my cutlets, then shallow fried them in oil. Because they are so thin, they take no time to cook. At the same time, I am toasting the buns in another pan. These I have halved and scooped out the bread from the middle, smeared with a little mayo (regular) and pressed down onto the hot pan. Each half then gets coated with the chilpotle mayo and awaits layering.
First comes a generous helping of romaine lettuce ...
Then the chicken cutlet ...
And top it off with thinly sliced shallots, tomatoes, avocado slices. I also added a squeeze of lime and some cilantro just because I had it around. Put the lid on, and it should look something like this.
One satisfied customer.
A couple of things ... you are going to want to have a relatively soft roll with this, otherwise it will be to hard to eat. And do not try to skip the chilpotle mayo. If you can't find chilpotle, then wait until you can. It really makes the whole dish. Finally, pound the chicken as flat as you can. You don't want to be chewing through a gnarly piece of meat.
The original recipe can be found here. I am definitely going to make this again, and also will make a point to check out this chef's other recipes.
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These are the chilpotle peppers which cost between $ 1.79 and $ 5.79 depending on where you buy them.
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Chilpotle peppers make me think of Dick Dale.
Wow! I want to try too!!! =)
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