Lyon Hall’s British chef de cuisine Andy Bennett first encountered schnitzel the way many Europeans do: in a beer garden. When creating the restaurant’s Alsatian-inflected dishes, that massive piece of crisp, breaded veal came to mind.
“It’s a nostalgia thing,” Bennett said. “If it wasn’t something I cooked [at the restaurant], I’d cook it at home.”
Bennett adapted the dish to jibe with the restaurant’s ethos, which includes locally sourced meats and lots of house-made components. Veal is replaced with Virginia pork, and a bright toss of fingerling potatoes, mustard, and gherkins stands in for the typically hefty German potato salad.
The key to successful schnitzel is a crunchy coating, so Bennett pats the crumbs firmly on the meat just before cooking to ensure they adhere evenly. The other necessity is prime ingredients. Bennett uses Papa Weaver’s meat—available online—or you can look for local, organic pork at Whole Foods. He also uses Darbo-brand lingonberry preserves—also available online—but notes that cranberry preserves from Whole Foods work, too.
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Lyon Hall’s Pork Schnitzel With Potato Salad
Serves 4
Make the potato salad:
4 medium unpeeled potatoes (fingerling, russet, or Idaho), scrubbed and cut into 1⁄8-inch cubes
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
½ cucumber, cut into 1⁄8-inch cubes
2 tablespoons diced gherkins
1 tablespoon chiffonaded parsley
1 teaspoon white-wine vinegar
In a large pot of slightly salted boiling water, cook the potatoes until tender, remove from the water, and drain. In a large bowl, mix the potatoes with the Dijon mustard, cucumber, gherkin, parsley, and white-wine vinegar. Set aside.
Cook the pork:
2 pounds trimmed pork loin
1 cup flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups unseasoned bread crumbs
½ pound butter
4 tablespoons lingonberry or cranberry preserves
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut the pork into 8 ¾-inch-thick pieces across the width of the loin. Place slices on a cutting board between two layers of plastic wrap, and pound with a meat tenderizer until they’re roughly half their original thickness.
Place the flour, beaten eggs, and bread crumbs in separate wide bowls or plates. Lightly dust each piece of pork in flour, then dredge in the beaten egg, then coat in the bread crumbs.
Set a medium-size frying pan over high heat and add half the butter. When it starts to brown, place 4 of the pieces into the pan, turn the heat down to medium-high, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes on each side. Remove the cooked pieces and place on paper towels, and repeat the process with the remaining butter and pork.
Remove the pork, keeping all the brown butter in the pan, and turn off the heat. Mix the lingonberry or cranberry preserves into the butter, and season to taste.
Divide the potato salad among four plates. Place the pork over the salad and drizzle the lingonberry-butter sauce around the plate.
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Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
