This mix for gratin with lemon peels is available both in this version with rosemary and in another version with parsley. In both cases, paprika and turmeric add a pinch of exoticism and spiciness to two typical flavors of Italian cuisine.
Gratin and breading: techniques compared
Beloved golden crust, how good you are! A gratin dish and a breaded dish are not exactly the same thing, in the first case the crunchy crust forms on the surface during cooking and the heart of the dish should remain moist and soft, in the case of breading instead the dish to be cooked is entirely coated and then you put it to cook. If the cooking techniques are different and the result aimed at is different but united by the crust, the underlying chemical reactions are the same and are also the basis of other things in the kitchen, so much so that the Maillard reaction is considered the most important chemical reaction that occurs in the kitchen. Don't worry, a chemistry lesson isn't waiting for you, we will simply clarify that Louis Camille Maillard was a French chemist and doctor, who did not deal with cooking and therefore it is a coincidence that he is known above all in this field. Maillard studied the synthesis of proteins and published an article in which he described how amino acids (building blocks of proteins) reacted with sugars. It is a series of very complex chemical processes, we just need to know that they are responsible for the formation of the beloved crust and therefore neither proteins nor sugars should ever be missing. And in fact: what do you do when you bread something? After passing it in the breading (carbohydrates, i.e. sugars) you pass it in the egg (the proteins), what do you do when you prepare a vegetable gratin? Add parmesan cheese (protein) on top of the breading before cooking. However, if you look at the recipes for meat or fish gratins in many cases you don't find the addition of cheese, why? Evidently because with due care during the cooking phase the proteins present in the dish could be enough to react with the sugars, while in vegetable gratins the risk of finding yourself with charred vegetables would be very high.
Where to use the lemon and rosemary gratin breading
Lemon in Italian cuisine is used a lot in combination with fish, but also with white meats, less so with red meats. Furthermore, lemon notoriously dilutes the typical bitterness of cooked vegetables. Essentially therefore this breading goes well with all these dishes. If we think about rosemary, the first pairing that comes to mind is that with potatoes, but in reality there are also recipes (and ready meals) for fish gratins in which we find rosemary among the ingredients (for example cod and sea bass) therefore in in reality this breading can be used interchangeably with the other one mentioned at the beginning depending on whether you prefer rosemary or parsley