Chicken Piccata

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I had pictures. I was going to do a lovely Thanksgiving edition with not one, but two dishes. I made a lovely spinach gratin as well as roasted butternut squash for Thanksgiving dinner. The process was lovingly documented. Then, with one slip of the finger, my camera's memory card was erased leaving me quite despondent. I could have cooked during the long holiday weekend. Instead, I chose to sulk and watch Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York back-to-back.

But I was back in the kitchen last night and tried out a recipe I had been meaning to make for a long time: Chicken Piccata.

I love chicken piccata. The sauce has a nice crisp taste and if there is cream in the sauce, it tastes rather luxurious and silky. Considering that the ingredients are inexpensive, you get a lot for your money and can easily entertain with this recipe.

Ina's recipe for chicken piccata particularly appealed to me because it does not include capers. Whatttttt?! I know! Capers are always in piccata! That's just craziness! Well, Ina doesn't put them in her piccata. And since I am not fond of capers, I went with it.

Here are the ingredients - pretty basic stuff. I'll tell you right here that I didn't fully follow the directions. The recipe in the book called for regular chicken breasts that you flatten. I opted for the 30 Minute Meal timesaver and bought thin-sliced chicken cutlets. I know I'm getting less chicken that way, but the time and effort saved is well worth it for me.



Here's a shot of the pristine dredging and breading station before the flour is everywhere, egg is dripping and breadcrumbs are clumpy.



When I took a cooking class a few years ago, the instructor told us that we really only wanted a fine coating of flour. It was very important to get rid of the excess flour, so she recommended "spanking" the flour off. I am not joking. She showed us by lightly spanking the chicken breast she was holding. It works. The excess flour fell off and the chicken had a really delicate dusting. It works better than just shaking the excess flour off. So yes, I spank my meats.

I also wanted to mention that I have quit using regular breadcrumbs for the most part. Ina's recipe calls for regular breadcrumbs, so that is what I used, but in all other instances I now use panko. Now panko is nothing new to me since I am Japanese. However, its suddenly become the darling of Food Network chefs. They all pronounce it
"paan-ko" or "pank-o." Given, it does look like the word "pancake" so I can understand, but it still hurts the ear. Its "pahnko." Anyway, I now use panko in all the places I used to use breadcrumbs - all breaded meats, meatloaf, and gratin tops. I find that it's just lighter and browns better.

Here is the chicken browning in the saute pan. It will finish cooking in the oven. I have to watch this carefully as I'm prone to burning breading.



The finished chicken. The oven has made the breadcrumbs very crunchy. Yay!



Time to make the sauce. This sauce is very quick and easy to make. I think it really only takes about 5 minutes. All the ingredients go into the pan. Ina says to add the juiced lemon rinds to sauce to infuse more lemon taste. I'm a little scared. Ina really likes her citrus. This could be really strong.



I'm just noticing that in my pictures, the lemon rinds look rather ... nipply. Anyway, the sauce reduces and I take it off the heat and add some butter to thicken it. Here is the finished sauce:



Here is the finished product plated. I think it looks rather good! I don't garnish it with lemon slices, but the drizzled sauce over the top and the parsley it quite presentable. Good enough for dinner anyway!



The Review
Excellent! I am so in love with this dish, I really am. I thought adding the lemon rind would make the sauce over powering, but it didn't. It's very good. Adding some half and half or cream would make it sooo good and very wicked delicious. Finishing the chicken in the over was a good choice. It wasn't overcooked and the coating was very crunchy. I still think it would have been better with the panko, but cannot say that the regular breadcrumbs weren't tasty. I served the chicken with some mashed potatoes and a salad. Joel, who is not crazy about lemon-flavored foods, was happy with the recipe and said that he would happily eat it again. Very good recipe and I highly recommend it.

Parmesan Smashed Potatoes

So why another potato recipe so soon? Well, I actually wasn't planning it, but then Joel and I got inspired by recent Food Network programming and decided to hold our own mini-Thanksgiving for two. I cooked some turkey cutlets with pan gravy, baked up some cornbread, sauteed some green beans and opened that old can of cranberry jelly stuff. Since we were having turkey, I thought it would be appropriate to do mashed potatoes, and the Barefoot Contessa has a few great recipes for mashed potatoes.

First we start off with the ingredients:


I will warn you right now. There is a lot of FAT in these smashed potatoes. I'm not even going to try to cover it up. I think the potatoes will turn out tasty because of the fat, but personally, I think it's excessive. Butter, half and half, and sour cream. That's a lot yo'.

Boil them 'taters. I'm kind of obsessive, I take off all the blemishes and imperfections off of the potato. I know I can leave some of them on, but... anyway, those are the little gouges in the potatoes you see.


While the potatoes simmer away, I'll melt the butter and mix it with the half and half. God. I never have half and half in my house. I don't use it in my coffee. I don't know how else I'm going to use the rest of the carton up.


Shhh. the recipe says to heat it on the stove, but I heated the mix in the microwave.

Here we go! Smashing the potatoes are quite satisfying. It makes you feel like you are truly putting effort into your food instead of just throwing something together to eat. I hear kneading bread dough is similarly cathartic. Here, you can see that the potatoes are pretty dry. I've only added in a little bit of the butter mixture. It should get creamier as I add more fat.


A little while later, the potatoes are smashed sufficiently and are nice mixture of fluffy/creamy. I don't like super fine pureed potatoes and enjoy them when they have a bit of texture. Anyway, now I'm ready to fold in the sour cream and Parmesan cheese. Seriously, I don't think you can make these potatoes any richer. And, I love calorie-laden carbohydrates.


Parmesan smashed potatoes. You can catch a glimpse of the rest of the meal in the background.


The review

The smashed potatoes are excellent. I didn't have a doubt they would be since the ingredients and preparation were very simple. They have a nice smooth texture without being gluey. The use of red potatoes works well. I like the difference that the peels make in the final product. However, as I mentioned above: THIS IS A RICH DISH. I don't think that the use of the three different fats were needed. Basic mashed potatoes contain butter and milk. Sometimes I substitute sour cream instead of the milk. I've never put all three into mashed potatoes before, let alone half and half and a large dose of cheese. This recipe could be significantly lightened with minimal taste discrepancies. Save this one for a special occasion or party.

The recipe makes 6 servings. I used the leftovers to make Shepherd's pie the next night. Potatoes were still quite tasty and didn't become grainy or lumpy overnight.

Cheddar Dill Scones

Here at the Barefoot Kitchen, we like to bake. This is because we love baked goods. We feel that the world would be a happier place if people baked a little more.

Our executive officers, in particular, highly endorse the creation of scones. This endorsement is based solely on the word's entertaining pronunciation.

I say, "skohn"
You say, "skon"
Skohn- [skohn!]
Skon- [skon!]
Let's call the whole thing off!

The Barefoot Contessa cookbooks have several recipes for scones. I decided to start with a recipe for Cheddar Dill Scones. Now, I'm not particularly fond of dill. I really don't use it very much in my cooking and know nothing about it. Well, I know its really aromatic and is used to flavor things I don't care for; like pickles. I do like cheddar however, so I figured that any sort of cheese-tasting biscuit had to be decent and a little dill could be overlooked.

Here are the ingredients. The original recipe makes 16 scones. I don't need that many scones, so I cut the recipe in half.

Yes, that is a bag of shredded cheese that you see in the picture. I confess that I Semi-Ho'd it instead of grating my own cheese. I was too lazy to grate 1/2 lb. of cheese and it was on sale. Will do better next time, I promise.

The first step is to make the dough which is basically flour and butter.


And, here it is:

The dough is very sticky, but you can see the chunks of butter in it. Hopefully this will make the scones light instead of dense, heavy bricks.

Add the cheese and the dill to the dough:


Roll out the dough and shape the scones. Ina likes to make triangles. I am following suit. Here they are, glistening with egg wash and ready to be baked golden-brown:


20 minutes later the apartment is filled with the heavenly scent of cheese and bread. Seriously, I think cookies baking are the only smell that trumps the smell of baking bread. My first observation of the scones were that they looked wonderfully crusty and flaky. Now, I've never had flaky scones, but I'm not going to turn them away either.


Cheddar Dill Scones:


The Review
I set them out to cool, but Joel found them. He tottered into the bedroom, where I was folding laundry, mouth full, saying, "This is pretty good." Like myself, he had been wary of dill-related flavors. I took a bite of the scone he had on his plate. It was lighter than most of the scones I've previously had. More fluffy and biscuit-like than usual. I think this is because there was less cream and more butter in the recipe. Still, it was very good. Since I usually have fruit scones, it was different to have a savory one. The dill itself was not overpowering, but definitely had a strong presence. I smelled it more than I tasted it. The cheese part was delicious as I expected it. Over all, I liked the scones but am not in a hurry to make them again. They did not convert me to dill and honestly, I'd prefer it without the herb. However, if you like dill, feel free to partake as this recipe was easy to make and quite tasty.