Gluten Free Chicken Schnitzel with Mushroom Sage Sauce

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

In a large frying pan, start making the mushroom sauce: fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil and butter for about 5 minutes, taking care that it doesn’t burn. Then add the sliced mushrooms and sage, and fry for 10 minutes: finally adding the cream and salt and pepper. Set aside in a warm place when done. While the mushrooms are frying, get on with preparing the chicken breasts.

In a flat shallow bowl, place the breadcrumbs, flour, parmesan, garlic, lemon zest, peppers and salt, and mix well. Set aside.

Place a chicken breast on a large sheet of baking parchment, and fold the parchment over the breast, not tightly, just so that the breast has parchment at the bottom and over the top of it. Using a rolling pin, or even better still, a cook’s mallet, bash the chicken until it is flattened: you don’t need top be as vicious as you imagine in this task: a good few gentle bashes will begin to flatten the breast. Flatten it to about 1cm thick: any thinner, and the chicken may begin to disintegrate. Set the flattened chicken aside.

In a large frying pan, heat the oils until they are very hot: test a little piece of chicken, or bread, in the oil: it should sizzle and begin to turn golden brown. You don’t want a smoking heat as this will burn the breadcrumb batter, rather a solid sizzling frying is what you’re after.

Dip one chicken breast into the egg wash, and then into the plate of breadcrumb mixture, ensuring that the whole of the breast is covered with he breadcrumb mixture: you may need to press down quite hard to ensure the mixture sticks. fry two breasts at a time: and fry them for 4-5 minutes on each side. Please ensure they are cooked through: I lift the schnitzel up, and on the underside I slice them open a little bit to check that the meat is not pink. Place the fried schnitzels onto a baking sheet lined with parchment, and pop them in the warm oven while you get on with the other two.

When the final two schnitzels are done, place these in the oven too while you heat up the mushroom sauce, and plate up the mashed potato, or whatever you are having with the schnitzel. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with chopped spring onions, and serve with lemon wedges.