Mum’s “kotlet” on rye bread with pickled mushrooms for lunch

I loved having my mum come to stay last week, even though my flat is so tidy now, that I can’t find a thing. Not that it’s usually massively messy, I’m just quite laissez-faire while my mum’s standards are very, very high. It caused a lot of stress between us when we lived together, with my mum always striving for perfection and young me striving for freedom, but I like to think that now we’ve learnt to love certain differences between us, and accept the other ones
A “kotlet” is something between a burger and a meatball, and my mum’s ones are fantastic. It’s great with mash, gravy and gherkins for dinner, but I’ve always prefererd them cold, cut into slices and served in an open sandwich with mustard, just like that up there. Here’s the recipe for about 12 of these babies:
Ingredients

500g minced pork
500g minced beef
2 eggs
2 toast – soaked in milk for 10min then squeezed
Onion – chopped finely and fried gently until soft
1 tsp paprika (or any other spice that you like)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
breadcrumbs

You mix all the ingredients with your hands, squeezing and mashing for about 5min. Then rinse your hands in cold water, so you can form the cutlets. You want them to have a flat shape, then you cover them with breadcrumbs and fry for 3min each side. Finally, put them all in a baking dish, cover in the oil they’ve been fried in and give them another 15min in the oven. Apparently, some people feel this dries them out and use the method of pouring stock over the whole lot and finishing them off on the stove, but I prefer them a bit drier myself. Probably because that’s the way my mum makes them, and that always tastes the best, right?