Pound the Veal on both sides with the coarse head of the meat mallet only.

Dust in flour. Make an egg wash and dip each piece. Then coat firmly in breadcrumbs. Pat down with your palms. Lay out on a tray between sheets of baking paper and freeze. 

To make the sauce, saute in butter the onions for 2 minutes and add in the garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Add in the chopped tomatoes and cook 5 minutes. Add in the canned tomatoes with their juice, Lambrusco wine, marsala, sugar, herbs and pepper. Simmer 20 minutes till most of the moisture has evaporated. Mash with a wooden spoon. Set aside. This needs to be on the thick side. Runny is no good.

Deep fry the frozen breaded veal for 2 minutes or defrost for 30 minutes and shallow fry in butter and oil for 3 minutes.

Set the veal steaks on a oven tray. Use slices of mozarella cheese trimmed to shapes and set on top of the veal steak. Place 2 Tbs of sauce heaped over the cheese (keeping away from the edges).  Top the sauce with clumps of shaved parmesan cheese. Spray with a small amount of oil. Bake in a 180° oven for 12 minutes or so till the mozarella cheese is bubbling at the edges.

Serve with Fettuccini on the side topped with the remaining sauce and covered with shaved parmesan.
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Veal is the true classic version but Beef and Chicken are very popular as well.

Beef Parmigiana:: Woolworths sell a cut called Beef Steakettes. Topside thinly sliced. This cut works really well in this dish and is half the price of veal. 

Chicken Parmigiana:: Slice a breast fillet in half lengthways and pound flat between clingwrap, not so flat that it breaks apart. Pan fry a little longer to compensate for the extra thickness.

You can make the breaded fillets and a large quantity of sauce ahead of time and freeze in meal sizes. Then it is such a quick and easy dish to get up in less than 20 minutes. With no percepitable difference in quality.

4 Veal Leg Steaks  (Chicken, Beef)

1 cup plain flour
1 egg with 25 - 50ml of water
1 cup breadcrumbs
Butter and Peanut oil to fry

1 Onion finely chopped
6 cloves Garlic crushed and chopped
20g Butter
3 ripe tomatoes
1 x 420g Can tomatoes
150ml Lambrusco white wine
75ml Marsala (Boronia)
25g sugar
2 tsp dried Basil
Cracked Pepper to taste

125g Mozarella Cheese
30g Parmasan               
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Egg wash is eggs and some water. If you add just a touch then 2 eggs are needed. The coating will be thick and may seperate more during cooking. If you add 50ml of water to 1 egg the coating will be thinner and stick better during cooking. The coating will be more willing to change shape as the meat changes shape when cooked. Personal choice.

This classic Italian dish (Veal, Chicken or Beef)  is a staple of every suburban restaurant, club, pub, cafe and bistro. Probably the most cooked restaurant dish in all of Australia. The quality varies enormously but even a badly done commercial prepackaged  frozen version is still pretty tasty and satisfying. Step it up a bit with quality ingredients and attention to detail when making and it is a superb meal. Ticks all the boxes.

I like to serve with fettuccini pasta drizzled with a little of the sauce and covered with shaved parmesan. Differentiates my rendition from the vege and chip version at the local pub. Adding Marsala richens up the sauce flavour making it seem a lot more complex than it is. A Great ingredient for any tomato based sauce.

So many recipes get this dish badly wrong. It's the crispy crumbed veal (chicken) then slices of mozarella then the tomato sauce (thick) and then parmesan. Soaking the crumbed veal in a runny sauce and melting mozarella over this is a disaster that looks and eats like a soggy mess.