I'd go with rice instead of pasta, and, crazy as it sounds, crushed pork rinds can make a really good crust.
You can use them to substitute bread as an ingredient in a lot of recipes. Pork rind crusted pork chops dude. Pork rind pizza crust with bacon and ham.
But here's a tip half of the people will argue with me about, but I'm absolutely correct. Oil in a marinade is either pointless or counterproductive. You get almost no penetration with most marinades to begin with, but oil makes it even worse. Meat is like 70% water...and you want to transport salt, and other dissolved things, into the meat. What does oil not mix with very well? Water. Do an experiment some time with some food coloring, and see how far the marinade actually penetrates. Less than a quarter inch over 24 hours. Only injection will change this fact. When I inject, I used salted butter in lieu of oil.
Brining and dry rubs are truly the way to go. Brines are mostly water. Meat is mostly water. The salt in the brine is transported through the water in the brine, into the water in the meat. Diffusion causes the salt to distribute itself evenly through the water, including the water in the meat, allowing much greater penetration. A dry rub can be just as good, since you're just putting salt on meat, which is mostly water, so the salt dissolves on the meat, and over even a short time, penetrates via the water in the meat. I wet brine pork and chicken, and dry rub red meat. Red meat is about 10% more water.
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