Chicken Piccata

Chicken Piccata is one of Matt's favorite dishes, so I've played with various recipes for it a great deal looking for "the one." Ina Garten's was the 3rd or 4th I tried, and it was the closest to what I was looking for. However, I use her recipe more as a set of guidelines and do not follow it line by line.

For one thing, her recipe does not call for capers (?!) so the first thing I did was add those to the sauce. After trying various amounts, I settled on 1/4 - 1/3 teaspoon of capers (without any of the brine in the jar) per recipe. It doesn't seem like much, but the capers have a powerful flavor and using much more than that gave us more of a caper-y sauce than we wanted - we were after a balance between the capers and lemon juice.

Her step of putting the squeezed lemon halves in the pan with the sauce while it is reducing is cute, but threw the balance the other way, toward being too lemon-y. So I skip that. Also, it goes without saying that squeezing fresh lemon juice is the way to go here. I have yet to find a recipe that does not benefit from squeezing fresh. It's easy, takes just a few minutes and the result is always far superior.

I've tried many variations on the chicken breading, most notably using panko when I made this last night. I'm kind of torn on panko. The breading is thicker, yes, and crispier, but the panko itself doesn't have the best flavor. That's kind of a problem since whatever breading I use tends to come off the chicken in sheets when soaked with sauce for serving - which isn't a problem - but you sometimes end up eating a bit of breading by itself and in a direct comparison between panko and standard Progresso Italian, Progresso Italian wins in flavor. I've also noticed, when using panko, that I get a better breading if I double the steps - i.e. flour, egg, panko, egg, panko. Hitting the egg and panko a second time gives you a much thicker breading. If only the panko itself actually had a good flavor. I've tried three brands - Progresso, whatever brand comes in the big container from Costco (can't remember what it's called) and some obscure Asian brand that I got at the Asian market. I had the same problem with all three. Progresso was, if I recall correctly, the best, but it was also much more expensive. So overall, I'm not completely sold on panko. Matt prefers Progresso Italian anyway, so I'll probably stick with that going forward.

For the chicken, split chicken breasts cook more evenly. In an attempt to give the chicken itself more flavor, I brined the four chicken breasts overnight in a mixture of 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups water. (I also threw in a couple bay leaves because, well, why not?) The chicken sat in the saltwater for a good 24 hours before I set out to make dinner, and it did make a difference. The chicken did not taste salty, but just had more depth of flavor. I will continue to do this step in future. The times listed on Ina's recipe for cooking are way off from what I end up doing - I find the chicken usually needs 4-5 minutes per side, and not 2, in order to brown nicely. I've also noticed that the chicken needs longer than 10 minutes in the oven to be cooked thoroughly. As far as what kind of fat to saute in, her recipe calls for olive oil, but I have also successfully used olive oil/butter, butter alone, clarified butter, and bacon fat. The latter two are my favorites.

Given the prevalence of butter in the sauce, I noticed a BIG difference the one time I made this using fresh butter from the local Amish market. It was much, much richer and creamier than using Land'o'Lakes, which is what I usually have around. If I have the good stuff in the house, I use it, but don't sweat it if I don't.

Finally, I've found that the kind of white wine used in the sauce does make a difference. My personal preference for a cooking white wine (for any savory application, not just this recipe) is Sauvignon Blanc. It's not overly sweet, and has a nice tanginess that I find very pleasing. Last night the only white I had in the house was a Pinot Grigio, and I didn't like the sweetness of that grape with the capers and lemon.

Picky about sauce ingredients or no, I usually make just a little extra of it. For example, I usually double the recipe for the chicken and then do three or four recipes of the sauce, depending on what I'm serving the chicken with and whether any of the sides would want some sauce (like pasta).

However I vary it - this is still one of Matt's favorites.