Published in On Our Selection News, November 24 2016 

The way to anyone’s heart is through a good schnitty.

I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately, and being the egotistical manic I am, I reckon I could do it.

So here’s one of my signature dishes: chicken schnitty. It’s a step up from my usual delicacy of nugg-chos: simple, but revolutionary. It’s nachos using nuggets instead of corn chips, which translates to dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets topped with salsa, cheese and sin. You can find my recipe online at https://justathought.me/2016/07/06/nigella-and-nugg-chos Yep. I published it online. Because if I died and took that recipe with me, I shudder to think about the kind of world I would leave behind.

But today is not about prehistoric-shaped pieces of processed chicken offcuts. It’s about the good stuff: a decent schnitzel.

I picked up this recipe from my housemate after we realised my whiz-bang food processor was useful for things other than margaritas.

Here’s the secret to a good schnit: don’t use store-bought breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs you buy from the store don’t come from bread; they’re ground from loaves of misery.

Rather than coating your chicken in distain, buy a bag of wholemeal bread rolls (because you probably could do with more fibre in your diet and I care about your colon) and make your own damn crumbs.

Leave the buns loafing around for two days or rip them open and gently toast them in the oven. You want the bread dryer than a baby’s bottom on a nappy commercial.

Now, blitz the bread up in a food processor being careful not to ovedo it. If your crumbs look like sand you’ve gone too far and should probably burn your house down and start all over again.

Grab your chicken and hack it up into worryingly large portion sizes. Make sure you flatten the chook to be of an even thickness – meat mallet is best, but a can of soup is just as satisfying.

The rest is simple.

Grab a bowl of flour (wholemeal is good because it will make you think you’re being healthy), a beaten egg, your crumbs and your chicken.

Flour up the chicken then dunk it in a bath of it’s own yolky creation.

It may seem harsh to dip dead animal in its by-product, but I have yet to come across a chicken I’ve genuinely liked. They’re terrible company and I don’t trust them. I liked Chicken Run, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have a tendency to peck each other to death. So once they’ve been ethically killed, use dried chicken feet for forks for all I care.

Chuck your chicken into the crumbs, using the heal of your palm to squish all the bread to the dead bird like it’s the flesh of your enemy (in my case, this is no act).

Then fry over low to medium heat in whatever oil you fancy (not coconut oil though because no matter how much you guzzle, you’re never going to be Miranda Kerr – especially if you’re struggling with a schnitty habit).

Once it doesn’t look like it will give you food poisoning, remove from heat and eat until you have trouble breathing.