RECIPE: Chicken Piccata
Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of chicken.
Yes, we eat a ton of it, but I feel like it has a tendency to be dry and flavorless. Huge chunks of dried out white meat are just not my cup of tea. It’s like eating leaves and blackboard chalk mixed together (I know this because I made leaves and chalk for dinner the other night and I was like, ‘Hmm, tastes like chicken’). I get that red meat is “out of fashion” because it’s “unhealthy” and “heart-attack inducing” and various other things that would necessitate “air-quotes”, but dang is it delicious.
Why would God torture us by making things like steak and bacon and cocaine bad for us? Why does God hate us? (I’m just kidding. Don’t email me religious arguments. Or anti-drug messages.)
The point is, I found a recipe for Chicken Piccata in Everyday Food (which I subscribe to and heartily recommend) that is consistently neither dry, nor flavorless. It’s one of those low ingredient, super fast and easy, reasonably healthy recipes of which I wish I had a hundred.
It’s delicious and you should make it. You can also add capers, but I don’t really know what capers are, so I leave them out. And I’m on vacation this week, so that’s all I’m going to say about it. I need to drink a bloody mary and go back to the beach.
| Chicken Piccata |
|
- Two large chicken breasts
- Flour
- Olive oil
- Linguine
- 3 cups of fresh spinach
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 3/4 cup white wine
- 1 Lemon
- Slice the chicken breasts in half thickness-wise.
- Pound chicken breasts with a meat mallet.
- Salt and pepper chicken and dip in flour until coated.
- Brown chicken in a skillet with olive oil on both sides (it’s thin enough this should go quickly and it should be cooked all the way through when brown on both sides)
- Boil linguine according to directions on the box. When it’s cooked remove 3/4 cup of pasta water and set aside. Add spinach to water, stir to submerge and drain pasta and spinach immediately. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the pasta and spinach and as much of the pasta water as you want to keep moist.
- Turn the skillet used to cook chicken on medium and add the wine to deglaze the pan. Add juice from the lemon. Cook until reduced 4 or 5 minutes.
- Add 2 tablespoons of butter to the sauce and stir until melted. Add pasta water if it seems too thick.
- Serve pasta and spinach with chicken topped with sauce.
I know what I’m making for dinner tonight! Thanks for the recipe.
mmmmmmmmmm delish! Made it last night, eating leftover as we speak. I also zested the lemon and used half in the pasta and half in the sauce.
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While I respect your dish (truly looks yummy), I strongly urge you to find and add the capers. Capers are salty deliciousness that are pretty much the reasons I crave chicken piccata! They are in a jar usually near pickles or olives in your local grocery store – easy to find. I’m willing to bet you’d like the little sumthin’ sumthin’ they add to your yummy recipe!