Making mom’s chicken piccata

There is just one dish my mother made when I was a child that has been seared into my memory – chicken piccata. As luck would have it, it makes for a great Mother’s Day dish.

Childhood recipes are a funny thing. More aptly, they’re a nostalgic thing.

My mother once made chicken piccata as a spur-of-the-moment dish — it was more improvisation than rigid recipe. We both remembered it as being incredible and future iterations of the dish were great, but nothing can compare to the memory of a dinner served long ago.

Over time, I forgot about the thinly sliced chicken cutlets, lightly breaded and pan fried. I forgot about the lemon sauce and most importantly, I forgot about the capers. Then, rifling through a cookbook to answer the ever-present question of what’s for dinner, I came across chicken piccata again.

When I made it, it was not as good as I remembered. I have slowly come to the realization that maybe my memory is of an impossibly delicious dish and good will have to be good enough.

But that does not mean there’s no room for improvement. I started looking for other versions of the dish and finally turned to Cook’s Illustrated. From there, I made some tweaks, including increasing the amount of lemon and white wine.

I also increased the amount of butter used to finish the sauce because, as Julia Child was fond of saying, “With enough butter, anything is good.”

There is a reason the dish is called chicken piccata and not just piccata. The latter is an Italian word, referring to a meat, usually veal, served in a sauce of lemon and butter. It’s sort of like an Italian version of schnitzel, the German pan-fried cutlets.

One nice feature of this dish is that everything can be done in the same pan. First, you will pan fry the chicken cutlets, then make the sauce in the same pan, cooking all the browned bits and juice released from the chicken.

The dish may seem fancy ,and it certainly is, but it is not hard to make. The most difficult part is frying all the cutlets because it often takes two or three batches to prevent crowding in the pan.

The cutlets are supposed to be thin. Usually that means taking thicker slices and hammering them with a meat tenderizer, into a 1/4-inch thickness, although you can also cut them extra thin. When it comes to the breading, I add a little bit of lemon pepper, which gives the chicken a nice little extra kick.

The piccata can stand on its own or it can be served with some thin pasta and tossed with butter and lemon juice, with the chicken served on top. The sauce goes nicely with pasta.

CHICKEN PICCATA

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut or pounded into thin cutlets • Salt

• Pepper

• 1/2 cup flour

• 1 tablespoon lemon

pepper

• Vegetable or olive oil • 1 garlic clove, minced • 1 cup chicken broth

or stock

• 2 tablespoons ca

pers, rinsed

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup lemon

juice

• 1-2 lemons • Optional: 1/4-1/2 cup

white wine

• Garnish: 2 tablespoons minced parsley

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, to keep the cutlets warm as the rest of the dish is prepared.

• Cut the chicken breasts into cutlets, about 1/4 of an inch thick. Pat them dry with paper towels.

• Wash the lemons and cut one of them in half, then, cut both halves into thin half-moon shaped slices. Either juice the other lemon, for a total of 1/4 to 1/2 cup of lemon juice or measure out store bought lemon juice.

• Season the cutlets with salt, pepper and other seasonings as desired.

• Heat a little vegetable oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat.

• Combine the flour and lemon pepper in a medium bowl.

• Dredge two to four cutlets through the flour. When the pan is hot, add them to the pan. Do not crowd them.

• Cook for 2 1/2 minutes on each side, until lightly browned.

• When the first batch of cutlets is done, remove them to a baking dish and put them in the preheated oven.

• Continue dredging and pan frying the cutlets until they have all been cooked, adding oil as required. Remove the cutlets as they finish, to the pan in the oven.

• Add the garlic to the pan and, 10 seconds later, add the chicken stock and 1 tablespoon of butter. Simmer until the liquid reduces by a half, around 4-5 minutes.

• Add the lemon juice, lemon slices, white wine (if using) and the rinsed capers and continue simmering until the sauce is reduced by half.

• Add the rest of the butter and stir until melted.

• Remove the chicken from the oven and pour any juices into the skillet. Add the parsley to the skillet.

• Taste the sauce and add salt or pepper to taste.

• Pour enough sauce over each cutlet and serve by itself or serve over rice or pasta.

Recipe adapted from

Cook’s Illustrated.