Tonkatsu with Mozzarella Fillings

I hardly do any deep-frying, even though I have a deep-frier at home. First of all, I don't like the idea of using close to 2 litre of oil at one go and I always don't know what to do with the oil after frying. Should I throw it away or keep it? Not only that, after cooking, the time and effort spent over the sink scrubbing the oily parts from the frier is really daunting. I can go on and on about how much I dislike deep-frying... but why on earth did I buy a tonkatsu cookbook then?

I guess my habit of buying cookbooks has reach an uncontrollable stage now. At last count, I have close to 100 cookbooks! This is a crazy amount of cookbooks, since I work full-time, study part-time and I can only cook on some of the weekends. And if I diligently spend 1 day in a week for cooking, and let's take a conservative figure of 50 recipes in a cookbook, that means in a year's time, I can only try out 0.01% (52/5000X100%) of all the recipes that I own!

Anyway, enough of my cookbook rambling, back to my tonkatsu cookbook. After months of sitting on my bookshelf, I've finally managed to try out one recipe today. It's tonkatsu with mozzarella cheese fillings and it tastes so great that I'd say it's comparable to restaurant standard! I'm now planning to try out other recipes in the book!

The recipe is written in Chinese but I'll try my best to translate the recipe here:

Tonkatsu with Mozzarella Fillings Recipe

Ingredients:
1 piece of lean pork, 18 X 8cm, about 1.5cm thick
1 egg, beat well
Mozzarella cheese
A few tablespoons of self-raising flour
Breadcrumb (**Note: I used storebought breadcrumb but the author suggests that we should make our own breadcrumb, as the mouthfeel is not as hard as the storebought ones after frying. If you're keen to make your own, just leave 2 slices of bread in open air for 1 day, then crush the bread into tiny bits, that's it!)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cornstarch

Method:
1) Slice the pork into half.
2) Rub some salt and pepper on pork, let rest for 10 minutes.
3) Rub a thin layer of cornstarch on each side of the pork slices.
4) Spread mozzarella cheese on one of the pork slices. Then place the other slice of pork on it, seal the pork slices by rubbing more cornstarch at the openings.
5) Lightly coat the sealed pork with flour, this is to ensure that the pork remain juicy after frying.
6) Dip the pork into the egg.
7) Coat the pork evenly with breadcrumb.
(**Note: Step 5, 6 & 7 must be carried out in the correct sequence)
8) Heat a pot of oil to 170 deg C. (If the oil is not heated well, the meat will lose its juiciness, as it takes more time to cook. If the oil is too hot, the surface of the meat will turn out darker)
9) Put the pork into the oil, when it starts to float on the oil and the surface changed to golden brown color, that means it's fully cooked.
10) Serve with lettuce/ cabbage, and cucumber slices.