Snitchil or Schnitzel?
What breadcrumbs live for
It was a game-changer: a tightly knitted cotton jersey rather than a knobbly woollen jumper.
‘Snitchil’ night was a highlight during my childhood and judging by the volume of ready-made versions available at grocery stores, it’s still a go-to family favourite in our part of the world. But ‘schnitzel’ where I grew up can be used to describe just about anything coated in chunky breadcrumbs that’s popped in the oven for convenience and, more often than not, smothered in cheese sauce.
So perhaps it’s a good thing that as children we never quite got the pronunciation right because Schnitzel is something quite specific. As a German word (in a cooking context) it translates as ‘cutlet’ or ‘escalope’, which I learned by ordering a Jägerschnitzel in southern Germany expecting crumbs. What arrived was a flattened piece of pork cooked in a pan and served with creamy mushroom sauce.
Now I check for ‘Wiener’ in the description to be sure it’s the breaded kind. In Germany pork is common, whether it’s topside pounded thin or a slice of fillet or boneless loin chop. And challenging any ideas that it has to be a lean cut is Nobelhart & Schmutzig – a lauded values-driven restaurant near Checkpoint Charlie, working with ingredients sourced strictly in or around Berlin.
Their Fettschnitzel is a celebration of eight-week matured pork from the leg, rich with melty, jelly-like fat under a crisp coat of sourdough origins, served with verjus-seasoned mayonnaise made with lard from the same pig: one that was raised on Erdhof Seewalde, a farm in the south of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It also puts the focus firmly on the quality, flavour, and provenance of the meat – rather than hiding behind a golden pocket of crowd-pleasing crumbs.
For us a key difference between the Snitchils we grew up with and a Schnitzel Viennese-style (besides the unbridled use of chicken) is how fine the breadcrumbs are. As we discovered one unforgettable lunchtime in Berlin at a brasserie called Borchardt, just off the Gendarmenmarkt in the centre of the city.
As much an institution as a restaurant, Borchardt could easily be a film set for a pre-war period piece. At the time it had a reputation for attracting celebs and politicos. So much so, there was a little box on top of the menu saying, ‘please don’t take pictures of other guests. Respect their privacy’. We went for the undoubted speciality of the house: Wiener Schnitzel.
It arrived in a bubbled, brown blanket of breadcrumbs, the edges extending beyond the plate. Sides were to the point: a lemon wedge and potato salad. The meat was hammered extraordinarily flat and the crust, in places risen like a souffle so that it both housed and hugged the meat, was an equally thin, crisp mesh of far finer crumbs than any Snitchil I’d ever eaten. It was a game-changer: a tightly knitted cotton jersey rather than a knobbly woollen jumper.
I was halfway through before I realised mid-slice, as I looked over Nikki’s right shoulder, that sitting behind a marble pillar on a burgundy velvet banquette was in fact a Vienna-born actor who played in Inglourious Basterds. The Austrian capital had a strong presence in the room, but thanks to Berlin we’ll never look at Schnitzel in the same way again.
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