Hello Hello!

This post was supposed to go up much earlier on the weekend, but things happened that prevented it (mostly me being far too sick to consider writing words).

A few weeks back I was struck with a revelation. Pigs are delicious, chicken parmas are delicious. So how could we combine these magical delights past the simple slice of ham or bacon?

Pork rinds.

I put it out on the social networks to see what kind of response it would get -

Well that was that, I had to give it a try. I was struck down with a sore throat come Wednesday and by the time Thursday had rolled around I was well on the way to being sick - not as bad as I would get later in the weekend, but enough that the CBF’s majorly kicked in and I pushed our scheduled attempt at The Wharf Hotel another week.

I Headed to LaManna and loaded up on supplied for what had been dubbed “The pork rind experiment”

Chicken, ham, cheese, eggs (for crumbing) Leggo’s Napoli, some beer battered chips, nandos perinaise for chip-dippage and a bottle of Tabasco to give the napoli a bit of a kick.

Then there was the star of the day … The pork rinds -

Now I took a lot of pictures of the cooking process, so from here on until the finished product there will probably be more photos than words. Enjoy!

First of all I put the pork rinds in the blender, I wanted them to have a slightly rough texture so I made sure to only use the occasional “pulse” setting to give them a gentle crushing, but not reduce them to pork-paste.

The finished product. It smelled like pork. Pork and salt. But mostly pork

Next up I took out the mallet and went “fifty shades of grey” all over the chicken breast. I’m not a big fan of overly-pounded chicken, so after a few whacks it used the safe-word (“Rasputin” for the curious) and she was ready for the crumbing.

A dip in the egg then into the rind

Voila! Pork rind crumbed chicken schnitzel. at this stage I was optimistic. Doesn’t it look good!

Covered the tray in foil and put her in the oven for 20 minutes, then uncovered for another 20. While I waited I got the chips ready, dosed them with a healthy whack of chicken salt and slid them in alongside the schnitz.

The toppings were watching, ready to go…

And after 40 minutes in the oven, the schnitz was done!

Time for the toppings, all loaded up and ready to go back into the hot box.

After a few minutes she was done!

Once she came out of the oven I assembled the parma on the plate with the chips (which I did manage to overcook slightly, but nothing terrible) Got my chip dip ready, cracked a beer and prepared to tuck in.

IT’S ALIVE!!!

I picked up the knife and fork, steadied them in my hands, I could feel my heart pounding as I slowly lowered them to the plate. I pierced the schnitzel with the fork as I brought the sharp knife down to the chicken, tearing through the flesh until I heard the clink of metal on ceramic.

I lifted the fork, I could feel the added weight of the portion I had cut. As I lifted the chicken the scent of roast pork filled my nostrils. I couldn’t handle it any further. I closed my eyes and ate…

And it was fucking dreadful.

It’s hard to explain just how bad it was without being there to try it. But imagine buying a lemon gelato on a hot summers day, you bring the lemon gelato to your lips but when you bite into it instead of tasting lemon gelato it tastes like BBQ pork ribs.

Now I’m sure those pork ribs are delicious, but when the brain is expecting one thing and gets another it throws it out of whack. The meal smelled very strongly of roast pork, yet it tasted like chicken parma, and on the travel from plate to mouth my brain got the signal loud and clear that “I’m getting roast pork, yum, I love roast po…OMGWTF WHY AM I EATING PARMA?!”

And the brain confusion wasn’t the only problem, the texture was terrible, I was expecting more of a ‘crunch’ to the crumbs but once they hit the parma they were extremely fluffy, it just didn’t work, as if the parma was covered in a very thin layer of salty marshmallows.

It seems odd to spend an entire post devoted to showing you how to cook something that I’m telling you is absolutely terrible, but thems the breaks.

Hope everyone had a great cup weekend, we’ll be visiting The Wharf Hotel this week, details up Friday (for real this time).

Next week - Parma crumbed in prawn crackers!*

The search continues…

*not really.