Saturday, June 20, 2009

A New Favorite


Now that I feel pretty comfortable in the kitchen, I am starting to come up with some specialties at home. One meal that Zack and I love is this chicken with lemon-caper sauce. I switch up the sides that I make with it, but there's always a green vegetable and right now I'm on a cous cous kick—try the Whole Foods brand whole wheat cous cous, it is awesome.

This meal couldn't be simpler to make, but it is definitely better due to the skills and techniques I have taken from culinary school. Fortunately, I can easily impart this wisdom onto you!

For the chicken, buy some boneless skinless breasts and butterfly each one into two halves (one will usually be bigger than the other, but that's fine). Then pound them to an even thickness using a meat mallet. This makes the chicken cook evenly and quickly, and pounding meat also tenderizes it. I almost always make chicken this way now rather than cooking whole breasts. Another plus: two of the pounded cutlets seems like a very generous serving, but it's really just one breast. You feel like you're eating more!

I originally improvised this dish off of a recipe from epicurious.com. In a shallow dish, mix some flour with spicy Creole seasoning—like Tony Chachere's. You're just using this flour for dredging, so about 1/2 cup flour plus 1 tbsp seasoning should work. Season the chicken breasts on both sides with salt and pepper while you get a saute pan very hot on the stove with a little oil. Right before placing each piece of chicken in the saute pan, dredge it quickly in the flour mixture, shaking off the excess flour. Cook each piece until golden brown on both sides and put aside on a plate, covered with foil.

Once the chicken is cooked, add about 1/2 cup of chicken stock, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, and a tablespoon of capers to the pan (add more capers if you love them). Buy chicken stock, not broth, if you can—it creates a thicker, more flavorful sauce. If you're ambitious and make your own chicken stock, even better! I buy a carton of it and then freeze the rest in an ice cube tray for later use. I think I got this idea from a Food Network show, and it is a great one for keeping chicken stock—a kitchen staple—on hand at all times.

Stir the sauce ingredients in the pan, scraping up the tasty browned bits from cooking the chicken. Let it reduce for a few minutes, until it coats the back of a spoon. If the sauce isn't thickening enough, you can always throw in a pinch of flour, just make sure to stir so there are no starchy lumps.

See how easy and healthy this is? The sauce and the chicken are an awesome flavor combination. In the picture above, I made the broccoli using ideas from this recipe from the Amateur Gourmet, one of my favorite food bloggers, who got it from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa). He calls it the best broccoli of your life—how could I resist trying it? The lemony, crisp-tender broccoli did not disappoint.

For the cous cous, I always like to add a little something to make it more interesting. I had some corn and tomatoes on hand, so I decided to make a summery cous cous "salad" by adding the corn, halved grape tomatoes, and thinly-sliced scallions to my pot. When making cous cous, add extra ingredients after it has steeped and you've fluffed it with a fork.

So there you have my online cooking class. As you can see, I still use recipes, but now they're just starting points. For example, I didn't print out the "best broccoli" recipe, just read the Amateur Gourmet's blog entry about it and got the general idea.

If you are inspired enough to make this easy meal at home, let me know how it turns out!

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