Turkey Milanese, in the style of Milan

The other week we had purchased these turkey cutlets on a whim. Outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas, we don’t really cook much with turkey. And a turkey cutlet at that. A breast or a whole bird I can handle, but a cutlet? Feeling uninspired, I turned to the Google to answer my cries for help and the L.A. Times answered. While all of their suggestions sound delicious, I could only pick one. This is that one.

Kidney Bean was there, as he so often is, eating a snack while his parents prepare his dinner. He is a little turkey, if turkeys are plump with curly baby mullets and like crackers and water from a purple cup.


Assembly line for the turkey: flour, egg and milk mix and then the bread crumbs. Then off to the rack as you dredge the rest.


The little turkeys then meet a pan of hot olive oil, when they sizzle and pop and smell delicious.


And the other side. If I’m being honest and truthful, I don’t like frying things, even in a 1/2-inch of olive oil…because it splatters and I don’t have a screen to stop it. I hate oil splatter. It is such a pain to clean up. You can verify with Ole that I was moving hot burners and everything on the stove to wipe up the splatters the minute they turkey was done, before we ate so the oil wouldn’t cool and be hard to wipe up. I can be a bit Type A at times. Just a little bit.


I let them drain on a cooling rack over a baking pan while I fried round two.


We added it to rice and Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomatoes and cipollini, but it could also go with pasta or a bed of greens, potatoes of many varieties or on a bun.