Chicken Piccata - one to split the audience!

The minute I saw the recipe for this Chicken Piccata on Foodista, I was intrigued.

I hadn't come across the recipe before, so I Googled it and found many very similar recipes - which proved it to be fairly authentic.  The photographs were interesting and although some differed slightly, the majority looked very similar.

All of this gives me confidence in a recipe, as if loads of people are cooking the same recipe in the same way, it has to be good!

It was a simple recipe, involving frying a chicken breast that had been tossed in seasoned flour with lemon zest, then making a chicken stock, lemon juice and caper sauce.  Tasty!

Or so I thought - and continued to think, once it was on the plate.  I loved it!

Hubby, however, found the entire dish "repellent" - I'm pretty sure that was his word for it.

Looking good!

Son & heir liked the chicken, but hated the sharpness of the lemon sauce.

I served it with mashed potato, carrots and broccoli - which seemed entirely reasonable to me.  However, hubby has a notion that lemon and potato should never be seen on the same plate (in fact - as we know - just plain old potato should never be seen on HIS plate! lol).  He didn't like the input from the capers either.

In the photographs of other people's versions, I noted that pasta ribbons appeared quite regularly.  I can understand that now, having eaten the dish, although if I ever made it again (which I won't ~grumble~) I'd be quite happy to have mashed potato.


I'd definitely say that this isn't a dish to be served to an almost-teenager who is going through a phase of being particularly picky about what he eats.  The combination of the tangy lemon and salty capers in the sauce was just a step too far, even though I added a half a teaspoon of sugar, to calm the sourness down.

All of which was a huge shame, because I found it to be completely delightful - and just the thought of it is making my mouth water.
However, as a dish for anyone who loves lemon and/or capers (like me), then fill your boots!

CHICKEN PICCATA  (serves 4)

Ingredients :

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded thin

3 tbsp plain flour

zest of 1 lemon, plus 3 tbsp lemon juice

pinch salt

pinch pepper

butter for frying

200ml chicken stock

150ml white wine

3 teaspoons capers.

Method :

 

1.  Combine flour, lemon zest, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish.

2.  Coat each breast with flour mixture.

3.  Shake off excess.

4.  Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan.

5.  Add the chicken breasts and saute; (turning once) over medium heat for 5 minutes or so (depending upon the thickness of your chicken) until cooked through.

6.  Remove chicken from the pan and reserve to keep warm.

7.  In the same pan, combine the chicken stock, wine, and lemon juice.

8.  Bring to the boil, stirring, until reduced and well combined.

9.  Add the capers, then serve with the fried chicken.

.

Two days into the new week : meal planning w/b 11.10.11

Yes, I know, I should have done this blog post by now.  Oh, but you do nag!  *chuckle*

Don't ask me what I've been doing in the meantime, but I seem to have been sat at the computer without anything useful coming of it, except I have collected quite a few new recipes and ideas for menu planning in future.  I consider this to be a good thing.

This week's meal plan is quite a good'un, I reckon.  It seems to be dominated by bacon in several instances, but three out of seven isn't all bad.

So let's have a look at what I'm planning :

Tues : Pizza for son & heir, Sweet & Sour Pork with rice for us

Wed : Spicy Chicken & Bacon pasties with salad

Thurs : Meatballs and pasta

Fri : Chicken Piccata with mashed potatoes, carrots & broccoli

Sat : Pasta Alla Amatriciana

Sun : Lamb & boulangere potatoes with carrots & garden veg

Mon : Full English Breakfast.

That all sounds really nice, I reckon.  I'm looking forward to all of it!

It's now Thursday as I'm writing this, so we've already had the Sweet & Sour Pork and my goodness what a triumph it was!  Accolades have to be given to the Adora's Box blog which is where the recipe came from.  The next time I make it (and there will be a next time) I shall make sure to include son & heir in, as I'm sure he'd enjoy it.  The flavours are gentle and rounded, not at all rough or acidic as they so often are with sweet and sour recipes.  He particularly hates vinegar-like flavours, and although this recipe contains a tablespoonful of vinegar, you'd be hard pressed to know.

Anyway, it deserves a blog post of its own, so watch out for it!

Last night was the Spicy Chicken & Bacon Pasties and apart from a complete lack of being able to pleat a pasty - my skill at doing so totally deserted me - they were really successful.  This one came from a BBC Good Food "40 Chicken recipes" booklet and you can find the recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

I will be blogging about these separately, too - and will include my recipe for them, as I tinkered about with it quite a lot!

Tonight was to have been Meatballs & Pasta, produced by hubby, but we had one of those "forgetting to take it out of the freezer" moments and so the meatballs are off.  We'll have to stop at Sainsbury's and pick up a bag of salad and some fish in breadcrumbs, I reckon.

Apparently, this is what it will look like!

Tomorrow's recipe, Chicken Piccata, is one from Foodista.  However, the author is anonymous, so I can't give him or her the credit they deserve.  Anyway, it's an interesting recipe where you pan fry the flattened out chicken breasts that have been dunked in seasoned flour with lemon zest.  Then you make a sauce which involves wine, lemon juice and capers.  I'm hugely interested to know how this will turn out, so watch the blog and I'll tell you!

Saturday's Pasta Alla Amatriciana is a bit of an experiment.  I used to have an Amatriciana recipe that son & heir and I really liked, but that didn't agree with hubby and gave him terrible indigestion.  I eventually had to bin that recipe, having tried all ways to make it okay for him to eat, without success.

This one, however, is prepared completely differently and with different ingredients (in some instances) and with no chilli.  Again, I'm intrigued by it.  It comes from Chow.com and is attributed to a Chef called Robert Sietsema.  For all that I can't replicate a lot of his ingredients as they are die-hard Italian, I'll do my best to get good ingredients locally for this and we'll see how I fare!

Sunday sees a repetition of the Lamb & boulangere potatoes that got bounced from last week.  I'm determined to do this recipe as it keeps on making my mouth water!  I'm hoping that some more of the garden vegetables will be ready to use by then.  In fact, looking down the garden from the window here, I can see a Romanescu Cauliflower peeking out the top of some leaves - so we should be okay there!

Now I do think that perhaps we should skip lightly over Monday and not talk about it too much.  *blush*  Why am I so embarrassed?  Well, it's a full English Breakfast for dinner - and I'm supposed to be losing weight!  However, it's a request from son & heir who doesn't often request particular meals - and we'd all been feeling the lack of black pudding in our diets, for ages.  A large part of the meat (bacon & sausage) will be grilled and if I don't have any fried bread and opt for a poached egg instead of fried, I reckon I should be able to get by without doing too much damage!  Ah well, it only happens once in a blue moon.

I also have a conundrum to conjur with, this week.  I have been given a huge bag of apples, which are demanding to be done something creative with.  Having had a long and intense ponder, I'm currently thinking along the lines of an apple cake.  Not so much sponge, as a more robust mix such as the Marmalade cake used.  Also, not sliced apples laid on the top, more chunks of apple throughout the cake - much as you would find cherries in a cherry cake.  Maybe some caramel aspect in there too.  I dunno - I'm still working it out.  However, rest assured that you'll hear about it quick sharp if it works out well - and with rather less speed if it's a complete disaster.

So - lots to look forward to!

.