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ROUSES.COM
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ITALIAN FOOD
I
t’s a meal as comforting as Nonna’s hug
when your grandmother’s specialties
might include veal or chicken Parmesan
and a side of fettuccine Alfredo, pasta
aglio
e olio
or spaghetti with red gravy (we say
red sauce, some say marinana, but that’s
another conversation). Serve it with a cold,
crisp Italian salad for a trifecta of the dinner
table and another good reason to visit. If
you don’t have an Italian grandmother, then
several restaurants will stand in, or you can
easily prepare the feast at home.
Veal or chicken panée is thin cutlets of
boneless meat slices that have been pounded
to about ¼-inch thick, coated in flour and
seasoned breadcrumbs then fried in olive
oil. The toppings, sauces and sides give the
recipe distinction from kitchen to kitchen.
The most entertaining part of making
a panée is pounding the cutlet into
submission, tenderizing and making it
thinner and significantly larger. We use
either a dead blow hammer from the tool
shed, which turns out to be especially handy,
or the more attractive and kitchen-worthy
metal meat pounder. Both tools do the same
thing equally well: delivering a blow that
doesn’t bounce back.
Once the cutlet has been flattened between
sheets of waxed paper, it’s battered using a
bath of egg wash, dredging through flour
and again through Italian breadcrumbs
before quickly frying on both sides in a
little olive oil. Then the fun begins, serving
it as is, simply panéed, the word perhaps
derived from the French
pané
, which means
breaded. It may be pronounced (pah-nayed,
pan-kneed) and spelled in a variety of ways,
depending on your neighborhood.
Parmigiana indicates the cheese, baked
atop the panéed veal or chicken, gilding
the lily or crowning it with a blend of
cheeses (generally Parmesan and mozzarella
or others, readily available from Rouses’
extensive cheese selection) and a lashing
of tomato sauce. Vincent’s Italian Cuisine
(Uptown and in Metairie) calls it out on the
menu with either breaded chicken breast or
veal topped with mozzarella cheese and red
sauce or breaded chicken breast topped with
lemon cream sauce. Manale’s calls it Veal
Gambero, the famous restaurant’s version of
panéed veal with peeled BBQ shrimp.
Osman’s in Mobile serves an outstanding
veal or chicken Parmesan. Franco’s Italian
Restaurant on the Gulf Coast also offers
both. Venezia’s in New Orleans’ Mid-City,
just down the street from the Rouses Market
on Carrollton, has been serving a variation
of the dish since 1957 with a creamy side
of fettuccine Alfredo. At Rocky & Carlo’s
in St. Bernard, you can order panéed veal as
a plate or po-boy. A side of mac and cheese
accompanies the standards in da Parish with
a red (tomato) or a brown (roast beef ) gravy.
Excruciatingly rich, a beautiful piece of
panéed veal slathered in Hollandaise
(another mother sauce) then topped with
jumbo lump crabmeat will bring back
memories of the really good old days in a
serving of a rarely seen classic, veal Oscar.
Whether or not it’s a panée at home or by
grandma’s house, the applause will make the
cook — or Nonna — blush.
Panée
for your Thoughts
by
Kit Wohl