♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we cook up one of our favorites, a German pork schnitzel with a side of gurkensalat-- that's a cucumber dill salad.

Plus we make Croatian mashed potatoes, seasoned with onions, paprika, and chives.

Please stay tuned as we cook up German classics-- schnitzel and sides.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

- Salzburg is a town built on either side of the Salzach River, and is a complex mix of both tourist destination and also rich culture.

The charm of Salzburg is not just the architecture-- it's a baroque gem that dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries-- but it's also surrounded by mountains.

One's first impulse is to think Sound of Music, but any reference to that box office hit is very much unappreciated by the locals.

It's much too Hollywood.

Speaking of locals, you can hang out at Sporer on Getreidegasse, sort of the main road there, and drink a schnapps spritzer outside on the sidewalk, where the local dialect is unintelligible, even if you speak fluent German.

Or you can watch women go by dressed in dirndls, the classic Bavarian dress, which now has made a fashionable comeback, along with lederhosen.

Salzburg is also unique because you can purchase sausage, cheese, and schwarzbrot, black bread, in the outdoor market, and then literally walk from downtown up into the mountains in about half an hour.

If you don't want to take lunch with you, you can stop at a window box guest house that overlooks Salzburg, and dine on an outdoor patio, sipping a local wine, maybe a veltliner or a dry Riesling.

Within an hour's drive, there are also postcard-perfect lakes.

The water is breathtakingly arctic, I know, with restaurants that offer lake trout served at tables perched on the shore line.

Swimming is mostly mid-summer, when the water temperature rises slightly above frigid.

If you drive a couple hours up into the Alps, you can hike above the tree line where cows are pastured for the summer.

The rock cairns, hidden pastures, ponds, a lively breeze, and views that make the term, "scenic" sounds pedestrian.

But the food is what really attracts the most.

My wife Melissa, her mother Rike, grew up in Salzburg, and I always start a vacation with lunch at restaurant Hertzel, a classic Austrian eatery where you can order wiener schnitzel, kartoffelsalat-- potato salad-- tafelspitz, which is boiled beef, weisswurst pretzels with mustard and of course a local Stiegl beer.

Melissa has a cousin, Stefan, who lives in Vienna.

So we also get to enjoy true wiener schnitzel, and also stopped by the famous Demel bakery where we buy a slice of mohnkuchen, the classic poppy seed cake.

So this week here on Milk Street, to honor German-Austrian cooking, we explore the secrets of schnitzel, a simple weeknight dish that can be made with veal, pork, or chicken.

When made properly, however, it's a delicate balance between crisp and wavy on the outside, and thin and juicy on the inside.

It's often served with gurkensalat, cucumber salad.

And we also offer today a side of mashed potatoes, made the Croatian way with paprika and chives.

Welcome to the cooking of Austria.

♪ ♪ - So today we're gonna cook schnitzel.

Now wiener schnitzel is the one I'm familiar with because I've been to Vienna a few times.

And one of the things that's really unique about schnitzel, two things, is the coating is very fine coating, and it puffs up, and really separates from the meat underneath.

And also it sort of has a wavy texture to it, and we'll show you how to get that.

It's a technique used when you're frying it.

But we went to Berlin for this schnitzel.

Of course the Germans have schnitzel as well, it's all through Eastern Europe, to a place called the Felix Austria in Berlin, a guy called Daniel von Fried, and he uses pork instead of veal, and he says it's more zaftig, which means it's juicier and fuller.

And we agree, we really like it a lot.

So we're going to start with a pork tenderloin, and we're gonna cut it into four pieces.

We'll start by cutting it in half.

If you see an end that is thinner, you might want to cut it, not exactly in half, but give this end just a little bit more space, because when you pound it out, you want four even pieces.

So we'll cut it like that, cut it again, and like that.

So now we're gonna pound it fairly thin.

I find that meat pounders have a fairly small surface area, and I always have a sauce pan sitting around, especially one that's nice and heavy.

And so I just use that, which seems to work pretty well.

And if you have a heavy bottom sauce pan, you can just really let gravity do most of the work.

(loud thud) So you're not pounding it like that, you're just going like that.

(softer thuds) If you hit it a little bit too hard, what can happen is the fibers of the meat sort of break apart.

And when you're frying it, sometimes it doesn't hold together as well.

It's also good, I think, not to have parchment paper or plastic underneath it, because then it slides around, it's nice to do it right on wood, so the meat, the cutlet's gonna stay put.

Let's take a look.

So that's the first cutlet, and we'll continue with the rest.

So this should be about an eighth-of-an-inch thick.

I wouldn't go any thinner, because it's gonna dry out on you.

If you err on one side, make it a little bit thicker than thinner.

And now we're gonna season with salt and pepper.

You know if you just season the coating, like the flour, you really don't get enough seasoning, really, into the meat, so it's better to do it ahead of time.

♪ ♪ So now we're gonna coat the cutlets, a typical coating which is flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

The breadcrumbs, traditionally, if you do this in Germany, in Berlin would be a Kaiser roll.

They would cut them up and then toast them.

You could do that in the oven.

Or you can buy a very fine breadcrumb.

Again, you want it fine.

We're gonna add just a tablespoon or so of oil to the egg.

This helps really bind that coating together.

As you fry it, the coating is gonna sort of lift off the meat a little bit but you want that coating not to break up.

So adding the oil really helps bind everything together.

You want to get the eggs fairly well mixed up.

There we go, okay.

So we'll take them, put them in flour first.

But make sure that we get any excess flour off.

And into the egg.

I like to use tongs for this, so it doesn't get all over my hands.

♪ ♪ And then into the breadcrumbs.

You do want to make sure you press the breadcrumbs down into the cutlets so they really adhere nicely.

You get a nice coating; again, you can see these crumbs are really fine.

Put it on there.

♪ ♪ So now the fun part, we get to fry the cutlets.

Two cups of oil; you can add, if you like, and they often do this in Germany, you can add a little ghee, which is clarified butter, it's right here, it won't burn, two tablespoons of ghee to two cups of oil, it just has a little bit extra flavor.

If you don't have it, not a problem.

The oil's at 360, I don't like using a candy thermometer, I think they're hard to read.

And also you're gonna be moving this pot around a little bit, so I use an instant read thermometer, I tilt up the pan, so you get enough of depth of oil to get a read, and I can read it, and it's 360, so that's fine.

Now we're going to put the cutlets in.

Start with a cutlet towards you, and then lay it away from you.

So it doesn't splatter towards you, the second thing is I'm gonna increase the temperature a little bit, because once you put something that's cool in hot oil, it's gonna reduce the temperature of the oil.

So this will just take two to three minutes.

We'll get a nice, brown coating on the bottom, and we'll flip it over and finish on the top.

So this technique, with schnitzel, is you go like this so the oil rolls back and forth over the cutlet.

That should give you a slightly puffier, and slightly wavy surface to the coating as well.

So we don't want to overcook it, so that's good.

We're gonna flip it over.

♪ ♪ (sizzling) You can see the coating is really puffing up now, so it's not all thin, you know, it gives it a really nice extra texture.

So we're good.

Now I'm going to check the temperature of the oil just to make sure we're where we need to be.

Yep, that's good, okay.

Now we'll do the second one.

You notice I'm doing one at a time, it's really better do one at a time, otherwise they're gonna overlap, the oil temperature is gonna go down.

You're not going to get that nice, puffy, crispy outer coating.

♪ ♪ Okay, I think that one side is done, let's check it.

Yeah.

So now you can see that coating, it's puffing up nicely, it's a little wavy, has ups and downs, which is what you want, you know, a typical cutlet when you cook it in a skillet, it's just all very flat.

You wanna really variegate it, if you will, you want it up and down, valleys.

A little puffy.

It's really what makes this dish special.

♪ ♪ Yeah.

♪ ♪ So that's the last one.

So that's the frying part, now it's the eating part.

it is served in Austria and Germany with lingonberry preserves, they're very bright, it's not too sweet, it really cuts through sort of the fried coating, it's really perfect.

So we're gonna do that here.

♪ ♪ And this should always be served hot.

A little bit of lemon juice, as well, over that really hot, crispy crust coating.

And we'll take a bite.

So...

The coating does puff up, which is what you want, and you get a nice combination between that juicy meat and a nice, crisp coating, a little bit of jam.

Mm.

Well, I'm calling the USDA, making this its own food group, because this is so good.

(chuckles) So that's a recipe for schnitzel.

This is a German pork schnitzel, not the wiener schnitzel, but the same concept.

Great, thin, crispy coating floats up above the meat inside, serve it hot.

It's absolutely delicious any night of the week.

♪ ♪ - So one of the dishes tried in Germany was the gurkensalat, it's a German cucumber dill salad.

Now, everywhere kind of has their own riff on cucumber salad, but in Germany, this one specifically is a little less tart, a little less vinegary, and it becomes a great accompaniment for schnitzel or other dishes.

So to get it started, I'm going to take about two English cucumbers sliced into eighth-inch rounds.

Make sure you peel it first, we want to make sure that we get as much weeping from these as possible when we salt them.

When you're salting these, you're only going to use about one-and-a-half teaspoons of salt, so we're gonna toss it around a little bit, after we get it salted.

And I know it seems like a lot, it really does.

But the nice thing about this is that when you are using a strained cucumber, all the water that's coming off will take off some of the excess salt, so it won't be overseasoned, and it should retain just a little bit of crispness.

So I'm going to set these down for about half an hour or so, just so we can get enough liquid out of them, and make sure that we've got as much awesome cucumber taste as possible, without making them soggy.

So while they sit, I'm going to go ahead and make my dressing.

We have some sour cream, and a little bit of champagne vinegar, It's a little bit sweet, it's a little bit acidic, if you don't have champagne vinegar, that's okay.

You can use an unseasoned rice vinegar here as well.

I also have a little bit of sugar for sweetness, and a little bit of fresh cracked pepper, about half a teaspoon.

And I'm going to mix this all up.

And the nice thing about this recipe is that you have a couple of things that you can do while your cucumbers are draining.

Get it nicely well-combined.

All right, on to step three.

So the shredded carrots make for a lovely topping on our finished salad.

So I'm going to add my salt and pepper, and some chives, and mix it all up, so it's well-combined, and this will also lead for a little moisture to come out of the carrots as well.

Already smells good.

All right, so once our cucumbers are drained, I will come back and we'll assemble it all together.

♪ ♪ So we have waited about half an hour.

And if you can see, we've got some liquid that has drained off of our cucumbers, and again, you don't need to rinse them.

If you're worried about the salt content, just take a little taste of this, and you'll see that the salt came down.

So I'm going to squeeze out the rest of the liquid from my cucumbers and combine it with my sour cream, vinegar sugar, salt, pepper concoction.

So we're just gonna take-- use your hands, it's fine.

And then you should be able to get a little bit out, and then as you do, you can just put it straight into our dressing.

So I'm gonna squeeze these out.

♪ ♪ So now we have our drained-off cucumbers, and we're just going to mix it into our sour cream mixture.

You want it to be coating everything.

I'm going to now add a whole bunch of dill, and I know that a cup of dill seems like a lot, but when you chop it up, it really goes down quickly.

So now we need to put this on the board.

It smells good, too.

I'm just gonna do a rough little chop here.

And it will reduce down, but we don't want that fine for this.

We've got this nicely chopped up, and I'm just going to toss it straight into my cucumbers and the dressing.

♪ ♪ And it smells lovely.

So I'm going to give it a quick little taste for salt and pepper, make sure I'm seasoned up nicely.

Just gonna grab this one.

Looks good.

So you know how I said that the runoff from the cucumbers is going to make it a little bit less salty than you would think it would be?

That's what happened here.

So I'm gonna add just a tiny little bit of salt to enhance the taste.

And a little bit of pepper, too.

Stir it up.

Make sure it's well-combined.

So let's plate this up.

I'm just going to pour this in.

There we go, I'm just gonna spread these out a little bit so I can top it with my carrots.

And so you can see we've got a lovely coating of dressing all over our cucumbers.

I'm just going to spoon some of this carrot and chive mixture over it.

It brings a beautiful color, a little bit of crunch, and a really lovely taste.

♪ ♪ Now we're ready to serve.

♪ ♪ Let's see how it turned out.

That's a really good bite.

You've got a little bit of subtle sweetness from the vinegar and the sugar acting up together, and I love the crunch of the carrots.

So gurkensalat, German cucumber dill salad, super easy to make, super delicious.

♪ ♪ - Today we're gonna be making Croatian mashed potatoes, also known as restani krumpir.

These are a nice, hearty, rustic side dish, and my favorite part about this recipe is you can make it all in one pot.

So we're gonna go ahead and get started.

I have a large pot and I'm going to turn the heat on to medium, I'm going to heat up a couple tablespoons of grapeseed oil, and here I have one large yellow onion that's chopped.

And I'm just going to add a quarter-teaspoon of salt.

Give that a stir, and we want to cook these down until they're really nice and soft and well-browned, and that's gonna take about 20 minutes.

And while that's cooking, I'm gonna go ahead and start prepping our potatoes.

So here I have two pounds of Yukon gold potatoes.

These are really great, because they have a nice combination of starchiness, and they're a little bit creamy.

I'm just gonna half these lengthwise, and then I'm gonna cut them into quarter-inch slices.

♪ ♪ Okay, that's done.

And the reason why I'm going through all this trouble to cut these potatoes, which you wouldn't normally do for mashed potatoes, is because I want them to cook more evenly, and they're going to cook more quickly, and we're gonna use a very small amount of water to cook these potatoes.

And I'm putting them into a colander, because this is a very important step of this recipe.

These potatoes need to be rinsed really well, because we just released a lot of starch from cutting them, and the starch will make the potatoes really gluey and dense, and we want them to be nice and light and fluffy.

♪ ♪ So our onions are done, they look absolutely gorgeous.

Really nice, deeply browned color.

I'm gonna take these out, just transfer them to a bowl.

Okay, I'm just gonna set those aside.

Now here we have our potatoes, which have been rinsed.

These are going to go right into the pot.

I'm going to add to them, just three quarters of a cup of water, that's it.

So these are essentially going to be steaming, which creates a much lighter mashed potato than if we were to boil them in a lot of water.

I'm just gonna add half a teaspoon of salt, and give these a good stir.

And I'm just gonna put them into an even layer.

I'm gonna turn the heat back up to medium-high.

So I just want to bring the water up to a boil, And once it does, I'm gonna reduce the heat so it's simmering.

I'm gonna put a lid on it, and let these cook for about 20 minutes, until they're very, very tender.

So you want to cook them until they fall apart easily when poked with a fork.

♪ ♪ Okay, so the potatoes have been cooking for 20 minutes.

Oh, these look great.

Now, if at this point there's still some residual water left on the bottom, I'm gonna check mine, and there is, you're just gonna crank up the heat a little bit and boil that off.

And it's okay if you break up the potatoes while you're doing that because we're gonna end up mashing these in a minute.

Okay, that looks great.

Now I'm gonna turn it back down to low, and now we're gonna add four tablespoons of salted butter.

We're gonna mix that in really well, while mashing the potatoes against the side of the pot.

I'm using a really sturdy heat-proof spatula to do this.

But you could also use a wooden spoon.

That would work really well.

This is supposed to be a rustic dish.

So we do really want to have large pieces of potato left over.

That's why we're not using, like, a traditional potato masher.

So these look really nice, really nice and creamy, but still some nice, toothsome chunks of potato in there.

Okay, so now we're gonna add back in these beautiful onions that we made earlier.

And then I'm gonna add a quarter-teaspoon of sweet paprika, which is a very traditional Croatian seasoning, and which I love on potatoes.

And then we're just going to add a quarter of a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper and salt.

I'm gonna go ahead and stir those in.

Oh, this smells amazing.

The onions and the paprika mixed in with the potatoes.

Once that's all mixed in, I'm gonna go ahead and add a tablespoon of chopped chives.

All right, these look great.

I'm gonna go ahead and give it a little taste.

I want lots of onions in my bite.

Mm.

That is delicious, I'm gonna add little bit more salt.

That's really, really good-- sweetness of the onions, and the paprika.

A little brightness from the chives.

This is a great dish to serve on a really chilly evening.

Okay, now I'm gonna transfer this to a serving dish.

♪ ♪ Okay, this looks great.

Nice big mound of mashed potatoes, and I'm just gonna give the final touches here for presentation.

A little sprinkle of beautiful paprika.

Looks so good.

And then some more of those nice, fresh chives.

This looks beautiful.

This is a great dish to serve along, like, sausages or other hearty meat dishes, like, braises or stews.

It's just fabulous.

It's Croatian mashed potatoes.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from season five of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com - All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

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From Vietnamese braised lemongrass chicken and spaghetti with lemon pesto to hummus with chipotle black beans and chocolate torta, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for just $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - Je présente Chris.

- Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪