1/1000. Chicken Piccata

So, the journey begins with Chicken Piccata!  Before I go on, there are a few things that I realized as I started to cook.  First, I have no artistic ability on food presentation for photography.  Second, my camera is not the best for making food look appetizing even when it isn't!  Third, I wasn't sure if I should take pictures as I was cooking of simply take pictures of the ingredients and the final product.  Well, I guess I will just have to make adjustments as we go through this journey and maybe after 1000 recipes, I would have made major leaps and bounds in food photography and presentation, not to mention blogging!

I thought this recipe was very simple to prepare.  I have always shied away from cooking chicken breasts because I find them very bland and I am not too fond of it's texture either.  Surprisingly, the chicken came out just tender enough and the sauce, well, it was good but I think it was too lemony.  The problem I believe came with using only 2 chicken breast cutlets and not the recommended 5 or 6.  I was reading the recipe last night and for sure I read 2 instead of 6 so I sent Ralph off to buy only 2.  I did not adjust for this fewer cuts of chicken breast and went ahead and prepared the dish with the full recipe ingredients.   

Lesson learned:  make sure to adjust quantities accordingly especially when the main ingredient quantity changes!

Speaking of ingredients,  there was nothing in it that you won't probably have in your pantry already except for the fresh parsley and the chicken cutlets.  The latter was the only ingredient I purchased 

to prepare for this dish tonight.  The parsley came from my herb garden!

I began by liberally adding salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken cutlets and then coating both sides with about 1/4 c of unbleached flour.  Heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a 10 in skillet and sauteing the cutlets for about 3 minutes on each side until they were light brown.  If I had more cutlets I would have placed each sauteed cutlet in the oven that had been warmed to 200 degrees and with an oven safe plate to hold it.  I would them have to do same thing I did from coating with flour till sauteeing until brown.  Since I only had two, I just placed the cutlets in the oven while I added an additional 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and sauteed 1 minced glove garlic for 30 seconds or just until you smell the aroma of the garlic.  One cup chicken stock and 1/8 in slices of lemon from half a lemon  were added.  This was made to reduce for about 4-5 minutes after which the additional 1/4 c lemon juice and 2 tbsp rinsed capers were added.  This mixture was made to further reduce to about 1/3 cup for about a minute or so. 

The pan was then removed from the heat, 2 tbsps of butter was added and allowed to melt, stirring continuously.  Finally 2 tbsps of minced fresh parsley was added.  The cutlets were transferred to a serving dish and the sauce was added on top of it.

Serve immediately over linguine or angel hair pasta.  If you are feeling lucky enough, you may also serve it with a glass of Pinot Grigio.  Tonight, I added some Filipino touch to the dish and served it over hot jasmine rice.  Verdict? It was just as delectable.

One of 1000 recipes is now in the books! 

1/1000.  Chicken Piccata

A journey through the kitchen

My daughter, Erin, and I have decided to embark on a cooking adventure together.  We will be cooking/preparing all the recipes in the newest edition of "The New Best Recipes" from the editors of Cook's Illustrated.  Publishers Weekly, in their review of the book says the book is a "literal encyclopedia of recipes...is well organized and extremely clear".  This is what we are counting on, I mean the "well organized and extremely clear" part since neither of us are trained cooks!  We both love to cook (my love of cooking came way later in my years) and just the thought of learning a lot of new recipes is something we are looking forward to.  There are 1000 recipes in the book!  Given that there are only 365 days in a year, we would have to cook about 3 dishes a day if we are ambitious enough to cook all the dishes in one year!  But, we are not!  So, we invite you to share in our successes and/or failures as we maneuver our way through our separate kitchens, Erin in Chapel Hill, NC and me, in Melbourne, FL. Let the journey begin!