Mamma Juliet’s Chicken Piccata

For Mamma Juliet’s recipes, you’ll find I play by the rules and serve only period-correct food. Like this simple, fabulous recipe for…

Mamma Juliet’s Chicken Piccata

Serves four. Ingredients:

Chicken

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, 6 oz each approximately, halved horizontally
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce

• 1 small shallot, chopped fine
• 1 garlic clove, minced or put through press
• ½ lemon, cut into thin slices
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks and chilled
• 2 to 3 tablespoons dry white wine or chicken broth
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed to remove salt crystals
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

This is a recipe that goes together quickly (think stir-fry,) so prepare everything ahead of time and line it all up so you can grab and use.

Prepping/cooking the chicken

Heat oven to 200 degrees and warm a plate for the cooked breasts.

The chicken breasts should be evenly thin, so pound any thick spots. Season the chicken breasts with S&P. Place the flour in a pie pan or flat plate, dredge the chicken in the flour and shake most of it off.

Heat a wide no-stick pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. When it’s shimmering, add two of the chicken breasts and brown lightly, then flip and brown lightly on the other side. Assuming that your chicken is thin, it should be done, but feel free to temp it (165 degrees is minimum) or cut into it slightly and check the color. You don’t want pink, but don’t overcook or it’ll be dry.

Put the chicken on the warm plate and into the oven to keep warm.

Add the second tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and repeat with the remaining two breast halves. Add to warm plate in oven.

Now to make the sauce which makes this dish so famous and beloved

To the pan, add the lemon slices flat to the pan, then add the chopped shallots and the garlic. Cook over low heat until the shallots and garlic are softened and the lemon has a little color.

Add the wine or chicken broth and simmer until slightly thickened, 6-10 minutes.

Add capers and fresh lemon juice. Turn heat to low and whisk in the chilled butter, 1 piece at a time. Slide the chicken breasts into sauce to give them a minute to mate with it, then turn off the heat and sprinkle with parsley.

Slide a piece of chicken on each plate, spoon buttery, lemony, piquant sauce over, and enjoy.

You can if you wish serve on top of pasta or rice.
Yes, both those products were available in Italy in the Renaissance.

Or mashed potatoes, and since potatoes came from Peru after Columbus sailed the oceans blue (1492,) we can in fact be sure potatoes, mashed or otherwise, were not available until the sixteenth century. :Christina notes she’s put everyone into a coma and drones on: In fact, France banned potatoes from human consumption in 1748. It didn’t last, but how interesting!

Videos to watch:

Take a tour of my office, watch The Husband use a chainsaw to make tree pots, and see the stone circle surrounded by lavender and listen to the bees humming.