Chicken Piccata

Mostly done...

Grace and I were watching Guy Fieri doing Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network the other day, and they showed a guy making a simple chicken piccata. Even without a recipe, Grace and I looked each other and said "that looks good; we can make that!"

I intentionally avoided looking up a recipe ahead of time, wanting to see how good a job I could do from memory of watching the minute or so they showed on that one recipe during that one episode.

So the other night, we attempted the dish from memory, using this as our recipe:

1. Heat a large skillet, then add 1 tablespoon butter and two cloves minced garlic (about 1 heaping teaspoon). Let the garlic get a little color (quickly) but don't let it burn. I added about a tablespoon of olive oil as well because I was concerned about burning the garlic and turning it bitter right out of the gate...
2. Take 5 thin-sliced boneless chicken cutlets, dredged in seasoned flour (salt and pepper) and add them to the hot pan. Cook about 2 minutes per side, enough to brown them but not cook them through.
3. Drain the pan of excess oil and greasy drippings.
4. With the chicken still in the pan over high heat, deglaze the pan with 1 cup chicken stock, 1/2 cup dry white wine (I used a California chardonnay), and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of all purpose flour. Bring this back to a boil, stirring a little so the flour doesn't clump.
5. Lower the heat to medium, adding 2 tablespoons of drained capers and the juice of 1 lemon. Simmer 5 minutes on one side, flip the chicken, and simmer another 3 or 4 minutes on the other side, stirring occasionally so the sauce doesn't thicken unevenly. The sauce should thicken, but if it thickens too much, add a little more stock (I added a splash of stock a couple different times, making sure I ended up with a nice sauce consistency and not an overly thick glop). This should be enough to cook the thin chicken cutlets through, but nick and peek if necessary.
6. Remove to plate and serve over linguine. The recipe should make just enough sauce to take care of the pasta (as long as you don't need your pasta drowning in sauce). A half pound of pasta did fine for us for this meal (half of a one pound package). [Keep in mind we are serving three, plus a smaller child who eats like a bird]
7. Serving suggestion would be to arrange the lightly olive-oiled pasta on a platter, arrange the chicken on top, pouring the sauce over the chicken and letting it soak through to the pasta. Sprinkle with the juice of an additional lemon (see below) and garnish with chopped Italian parsley if you have it handy.

The recipe went over well. Everyone liked it. Making it again (and I will), I would tweak the above recipe as follows:

• In step 1, I would double the garlic to 4 cloves and make the olive oil a definite. I love garlic...
• In step 2, I will probably salt and pepper the chicken lightly before dredging in the seasoned flour  just to be sure I had enough seasoning on it.
• In step 5, I would add the juice of two lemons, not just one. At the end, I would sprinkle the plated platter with the juice of a third lemon to give it a final touch of brightness (we all love lemon).

It feels good to be a knowledgeable enough home cook to be able to watch a recipe being made with no commentary on measurements for the ingredients but have a good enough feel for it to be able to recreate a recipe to an acceptable level. This is an easy dish well worth making.