Chicken Milanese is the king of homemade fast food

When it comes to home cooking, we’re obsessed with optimisation. Today this manifests itself in reels on Instagram offering a ‘hack’ to make the time you spend in your kitchen shorter and your dinner to arrive more quickly. Harder, faster, better, stronger.

None of this is new: there was a time when every Jamie Oliver cookbook shaved ten minutes of the promised cooking time off the last. Delia Smith’s How to Cheat at Cooking caused a public outcry (can you believe she advocated for frozen mashed potato?). The whole appeal of air fryers is that they’re fast, and while slow cookers don’t exactly get to their destination quickly, they do so with as little intervention as possible from the cook. But looking back through my older cookery books, it’s a theme that neither really arrived nor fell out of fashion: we’ve always had one eye on how we can speed up the lead-up to dinner.

I, however, am often in the opposing camp. Some things can’t be rushed – and that’s part of their appeal. Knitting a cardigan, sewing a quilt, making a croissant from scratch. Here, the time and the attention paid are the point. But also, like most people, I have to get supper on the table seven days a week. Some of those nights I’m happy to stand over a risotto for up to an hour, or to conjure up a multi-element feast that sees me pottering about the kitchen prepping and tending. There are other nights when I’m tired and busy, contending with work, bedtimes and extra-curricular activities. I need to stay up-to-date with The Pitt or my library books are due back and I haven’t finished them.

The term ‘crowd-pleaser’ is overused but here it is deserved. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t rave about it

That’s when there is no substitute for fast food. I don’t mean junk food or take-out, I mean a handful of ingredients that are easy and quick to prep and easy and quick to cook. Chicken Milanese is just this kind of fast food. The term ‘crowd-pleaser’ is overused but here it is deserved. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t rave about it, and the effort-to-reward ratio is unbeatable.

It has its origins in cotoletta alla milanese, a breaded bone-in veal chop, which has been a traditional dish in Milan since the 12th century. Cotoletta is also the generic name for the flattened, boneless version, which cooks far more speedily. Cotoletta became known simply as Milanese (or Milan-style) and is a hugely popular way of cooking in Argentina, where it arrived with the influx of Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, and who now make up the largest immigrant community in the country. Argentina has a national Milanese day (3 May) and it’s estimated that 300 million kg of Milanese are eaten in the country every year. Argentinian Milanese tends to use beef, but chicken has become a popular and cheap substitute around the world.

Appropriately for fast food, the preparation is so simple I can describe it in one sentence. The chicken is pounded and flattened before being dredged in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, and is then pan-fried rather than deep-fried. It really is as simple as that. I can’t resist stirring a fistful of freshly grated Parmesan through the breadcrumbs; opinions differ as to the authenticity of this, but its deliciousness is uncontested. It amps up the beautiful golden colour of the pan-fried cutlet, and acts as seasoning. Crisp, tender, savoury and on the table in less time than it takes to preheat an oven.

Chicken Milanese is often served with lemon, and perhaps a pile of rocket. But another traditional way is my favourite: serving it over long pasta dressed in a simple tomato sauce. I make my sauce by simmering a tin of good plum tomatoes or polpa (tinned tomato pulp) with a really generous glug of olive oil and three finely sliced garlic cloves. Cook this down until it thickens. Toss freshly cooked spaghetti through the tomato sauce and place the hot chicken on top.

Serves: 4
Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes

• 2 chicken breasts
• 30g plain flour
• 2 large eggs
• 60g panko breadcrumbs
• 50g freshly grated Parmesan
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 lemon

1. Slice each chicken breast laterally, so that you have four fillets. Place one of the chicken breasts on a large sheet of clingfilm and fold the clingfilm over it. Using a rolling pin, gently bash the chicken breast through the clingfilm, flattening it all over, until it is double its original size. Repeat with each of the remaining chicken fillets.
2. Place the flour in a dish and season with salt; crack the eggs into a second bowl and whisk gently to mix the yolks and whites; place the breadcrumbs into a third dish, grate the Parmesan into this dish, and stir it through the breadcrumbs.
3. Dredge each fillet through the flour first, then the eggs, and finally the breadcrumbs, pressing the breadcrumbs into the chicken breast, so they stick evenly all over.
4. Heat the oil in a large frying pan; it is ready when some breadcrumbs dropped into it sizzle audibly and turn golden.
5. Place two of the coated fillets into the oil and cook until golden brown, turn over and cook on the other side. Set to one side and repeat with the other two fillets.
6. Halve the lemon and squeeze the juice over the fillets. Serve straight away.