Chicken piccata is saucy, speedy and works with a mushroom swap
A silky sauce, tangy with lemon and the salty punch of capers is a hallmark of piccata recipes in North America.
But a common misconception trails the delicious dish. “I don’t know why you Americans think it is just about that sauce,” my friend Lucia tells me by phone from Italy.
In fact, in Italian, a piccata is a thin piece of meat, pounded flat, according to several sources, including “The Food Lover’s Companion” and
“The Dictionary of Italian Wine and Food.” In countless cookbooks, it is used interchangeably with the term scallopini; in English, today, we would call it a cutlet.
In the 2005 edition of “The Silver Spoon,” one of Italy’s best-selling cookbooks, there are two recipes for piccata: Piccata al limone, which is translated as “veal scallops in lemon,” and piccata al marsala, “veal scallops with marsala,” neither of which contains capers.
A 1955 menu from Casina Delle Rose & Lucciola — a once-glamorous restaurant and banquet hall that is now Rome’s Casa del Cinema — lists Piccata di Vitello Al Pomodora (veal cutlets in tomato sauce) for 800 lira.
What Americans today think of as piccata, with a creamy pan sauce, bright with lemon and pungent with capers, is more of an Italian-American riff on that pounded Italian cutlet.
A wonderfully quick, surprisingly easy riff that can be made with almost any protein or vegetable.
Here’s how it goes: Small, thin cutlets – below, I suggest boneless skinless chicken breasts sliced in half horizontally or large trumpet mushrooms cut into thick slabs – are coated in mustard and lemon zest, dunked in flour and pan-fried until deep golden brown all around. Remove them from the pan, then make a pan sauce by adding some liquid (white wine, stock and/or water) and letting it reduce while you scrape up any browned bits. Whisk in some butter, lemon juice, capers (roughly chopped, if you’d like) and chopped parsley. Spoon the sauce over the chicken or mushrooms and serve.
Instead of the chicken or mushrooms, you could try this method with:
Swordfish
Fillets of sole or other tender white fish
Scallops
Liver
Thick rounds of eggplant, salted and patted dry
Zucchini, sliced into long planks
Cooked and drained gigante beans (no dredging or frying needed)
Dredging meat or fish in flour protects it from overcooking and helps achieve an evenly golden brown color all the way around.
Some cooks start by dipping their cutlets or fillets in egg first; others dip the still-damp meat or fish right into the flour. I like using mustard as a coating because it’s an easy way to add flavor and plays well with the capers. The mustard coating also means you could dip the meat or mushrooms in breadcrumbs instead of flour, for a crunchier exterior.
But using flour comes with another benefit: The flour left behind in the pan caramelizes, helping to both flavor and thicken the pan sauce. I like reducing the sauce until it coats the side of my spoon, but if you don’t, don’t let it reduce too much, or thin it with more lemon juice, wine or water.
Finally, I highly recommend chopping your capers before adding them to the sauce. This ensures that every bite will have a bit of their tangy, bracing acidity.