As a little girl, my mom often made city chicken. Despite it’s name, there is no chicken in city chicken. As a little girl, that always bothered me. I really loved chicken and I couldn’t understand why a pork dish would call itself chicken except to fool me. The good thing is, I really liked city chicken too (even when I learned it wasn’t chicken.)
City chicken is actually a dish that my grandma made for her family when my mom was little. I imagine the dish came about because pork was more accessible in some areas than chicken. My mom and grandma both grew up in Cincinnati and since Cincinnati definitely has a lot of pork, this dish more than makes sense.
I recently stumbled upon a monthly roundup called Inheritance Recipes, hosted by both Pebble Soup and Coffee & Vanilla. The idea is that each month you make a recipe that ties to your roots. Of course, this is the perfect dish for that!
I served it next to sauteed spinach. My mom used to make a lot of creamed spinach (you know, the frozen kind.) I hated spinach – but really, I think I just hated frozen creamed spinach. So I ‘fancied’ this up just a tiny bit.
City Chicken
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs cubed pork tenderloin
1 egg, beaten
1 cup bread crumbs
4 skewers, cut down to half the size
salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a baking dish with cooking spray.
- Stick four pieces of pork (approximately) on each skewer.
- Put the egg in a flat dish. Place the bread crumbs in another. Season the bread crumbs with salt and pepper.
- Roll the skewers in the egg. Then roll each skewer in the bread crumbs.
- Set on the baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, flipping them halfway through.
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