Chicken Picatta
Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 3:00AM | Seeley deBorn 
Of course, when I made this, I didn't measure anything. Unless I'm baking, I rarely actually measure, and even then I play fast and loose with teaspoons and quarter cups. So, I'm basing the proportions in this recipe on the pictures. And I'm promising to write shit down from now on. I will. Totally will. If I remember.
Chicken Piccata
What you need:
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1/4 c flour
- 1 tbsp lemon zest
- 3 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 c parsley, chopped and packed into the measuring cup^
- 1/4 - 1/2 c white wine (or white grape juice, stock, or other liquid of your choice)
- 1 1/2 c chicken stock
- 1 tbsp capers
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1/4 c grated romano or parmesan cheese
- about 1/2 lb of pasta
Recipe Guy made this but used basil instead of parsley and highly recommends it as a substitute.
What you gotta do:
If you're working with one cutting board, and aiming to use only one, you're going to want to chop all the fresh stuff first, and then deal with the chicken later. Since one board used is only one board to wash, that's what I'm going to say I did. It's the most probable sequence of events.
** Put water on to boil for the pasta. **
Chop the parsley. Zest the lemon and finely mince the zest. (mince it finer than this pic).
Cut the lemon in half and juice both halves.
This is a little more like what the zest should look like. And yes, it's a gratuitious extreme closeup.
Okay, that's it for the fresh stuff. Fast and easy.
Now the bird. If you've never "butterflied" a chicken breast before, now's your chance. It sounds fancy but really, it's just a way to get the chicken thin enough to cook really fast, and go a lot further. Yes, you could pound the shit out of it with a wine bottle, but when you do that, you actually break the flesh apart; it will crumble in the pan much the way ground beef does. Not the goal here. You're going to have to find some other means of venting your frustrations.
So, to "butterfly" a chicken breast, you want to lay it flat on the cutting board and hold it in place with the palm of your hand. Hold it! You don't want it flying away on you.
With the knife parallel to the cutting board and your hand, start at the top of the breast and draw the blade, still flat (you tilt, you bleed; keep it flat) toward you.
When you get to the end of the knife, check your progress. Since you're being careful and going slowly, you're probably only half way through. Reinsert the knife where the flesh is still joined, and repeat until you make it just about through to the other side.
Now, if you were aiming for a real "butterfly" this is where you'd stop. Me I want a bunch of small thin peices of chicken, so I kept going and cut it into two pieces. Actually, because the breasts were a little thick, I re-butterflied them. I cut each breast into thirds. Doing this can make two chicken breasts go a long way.
Yes, that is only two boneless skinless chicken breasts. No they were not mutants. Those pieces are very thin. You'll see just how thin as they're cooking.
Wait, that's a different cutting board. Apparently I had to wash two.
Before the chicken get into the pan though, it needs to be dredged. Fancy schmancy food word for "coat in flour". So a few recipes I checked before I started (no, I wasn't totally winging it as I cooked, I'm just winging it as I tell you what I did) suggested adding either cheese or zest to the flour. I added both.
It was a total waste of cheese and zest. Neither actually stuck to the chicken. Don't bother. Just use flour, with a little salt and pepper if you'd like.
Before you start dredging though (you know, when I worked at the sawmill, dredge had a whole different meaning) you want to get your pan heating. Medium high, olive oil in it.
Once the pan is warm, dredge a tiny piece of chicken in the seasoned (but not cheesey or zesty) flour, and check the temperature. It should bubble around the edges and start to look cooked almost instantly.
No, that's not as much oil as it looks like, it's just a tiny piece of chicken.
So, since the oil is hot, start dipping your thin slices of chicken into the flour. Coat them all over, shake off the excess,
and lay them in the pan. Do the biggest peices first because they'll need the longest to cook.
Even still, they'll be looking pretty cooked by the time you get the last pieces in the pan.
Once everybody is in, you're probably going to need to start flipping. These, I flipped a little early, they aren't quite golden enough, and I had to turn them a second time to finish the browning.
Ideally what you want is something that looks a little more like this second extreme food close up:
Golden brown and delicious. Now you see why the pan and oil had to be so hot. You want to get this browning in just a few minutes because those are some thin pieces of bird.
Once everybody is nicely tanned, take them out of the pan, and keep them warm somewhere.
If you aren't using wine, you can use an extra 1/4 c of stock, white grape juice, or a combination of lemon juice and stock in this step.
Pour 1/4 c of your chosen liquid into the hot pan. It's going to bubble and fiz and that's good.
That bubbling is lifting all the yummy golden bits of chicken and flour off the pan and into your sauce. Stir to encourage them off the bottom and into the liquid.
It's going to thicken pretty quick as you lose water to evaporation, so add the lemon juice to keep it liquidy.
Bring that to a boil and slowly add the stock. You want to keep this sauce hot and reducing in volume.
We're not aiming to be able to coat pounds of pasta with the sauce, but more to create a hot "dressing" for it and the chicken.
Once you've added all the stock, and it's simmering nicely, toss in the zest and the capers.
Now, you can turn the heat down to medium low. You've cooked your chicken, deglazed the pan, reduced your sauce and added the seasonings. The final step to finishing the sauce is ... butter.
Oh yes, butter.
This is the French influence on what appears to be an otherwise Itanlian dish. Finishing a sauce with butter gives it a certain smoothness and gloss. It softens the sharpness of the lemon, and sweetens the salt of the briney capers.
And, well, it's butter.
But you don't want to boil it, just melt it, that's why you've turned your heat down.
Yeah, looks a lot richer than it did a few minutes ago, doesn't it?
Once you've melted all the butter into the sauce, you can return the chicken to the pan. You just want it in there long enough to get coated. Now is also the time for parsley.
*goes back and edits earlier part of post to remind you to boil water and pasta*
Now that your chicken is done, and your pasta is cooked...
see, it is:
Put it all together on a plate.
Top with a sprinkle of cheese, and serve with a glass of whatever wine you used in the sauce.
Want a bite?
I really did have a few recipes handy as I was making this, I just didn't make a note of the changes I made to them. I do that kind of thing a lot. Sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes, like with this, it does. Unfortunately, because I forgot to write it down as I was cooking, it looks like I'm pantsing my butt off here, when really, it was a perfectly plotted meal.
What do you make by winging it?
I can cook, fast and easy, omg yum, suggested serving in Seeley, dinner 
Reader Comments (6)
Oh man! That is seriously drool worthy. I might have to buy some capers just so I can make it. Although, since I only have 6 weeks left until the big move, I hate to buy anything I don't really need. Maybe I'll just have to find stuff to put them in. :)
Capers actually come in pretty small jars. Usually only 3 or 4 tbsp per jar.
If you don't feel like having this 4 times in the next 6 weeks ;) you can add a chopped tsp or two to any salad dressing, sprinkle them on sammiches, or over a tart red pasta sauce, or have fish and chips with home made tartar sauce. If you make a roast they're also a lovely tangy little addition to the gravy. :)
What I usually make by winging it is either chicken chardonnay, beef stroganov. It's usually something I've made in culinary school or have had from the student bistro at school.
A perfectly plotted chicken, lol. I like the way you got so many pieces of chicken out of the two breasts. :)
@Danie: Chicken Chardonnay. I'm totally intrigued!
@jodi: This is a great budget meal! Plus, it freezes pretty well too! A couple pieces of chicken and a few tbsp of sauce in a freezer bag, and it's that much faster the second time around. :)
I have to try this.
I'll probably use kumquat zest, since one of my kumquats has decided to bear right now instead of in the fall, and I'll probably grate the zest instead of mincing it.
It does look yummy.