Your Favorite Dish's Favorite Dish

Week night convenience with date night flavors? Sign us up. Chicken piccata is one of our absolute favourite dishes to make, especially with a bit of pasta and some roasted veggies. Chicken piccata also happens to be a great example of an important cooking principle; the Maillard reaction. We don't want to oversell this one - it's delicious, and we can't wait for you to try it.

The Maillard Reaction

Note: Below, we get into the chemical processes of what happens when food browns, and a hefty chunk of this knowledge is from Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: an exquisite book full of the science on cooking reactions. Pick up the book at Indigo here, or see if your local library has a copy. Check it out if you want to do some reading on your own - we can't recommend it enough).

Louis Camille Maillard was a French physician who discovered the Maillard Reaction around 1910. Basically, a carbohydrate molecule and an amino acid react with one another, creating an unstable intermediate structure, which then creates hundreds of different chemical by-products. This results in a brown coloration to the food and full, intense flavour. Browning can be achieved through both dry and wet cooking methods. Dry methods include searing, sauteing, roasting and boiling, while wet methods include boiling, steaming, and braising. With our Piccata, we're focusing on a dry cooking method (pan searing with oil).

Note: it's still considered a dry cooking method when oil is in the pan. The oil is considered a medium to help evenly cook an uneven surface of your protein rather than a cooking liquid.

Maillard reactions occur when dry cooking at high heat in an oiled sauté pan, as it quickly dehydrates the outside of the food and kicks off the browning reaction. The trick, as always, is to cook the inside to a safe and delicious temperature, while not overcooking or burning the outside; This is why some cuts of meat are seared at high temperature first, then removed from the pan, then cooked to proper temperature at a lower heat. We do not need to do that for this recipe, as the chicken breasts are butterflied thin: the heat from the pan has a shorter distance to travel through the meat, so the meat cooks faster, letting you cook hotter with a lower risk of burning or undercooking. Keep your pan's heat at a medium high temperature, and you should be just fine.

Finally, it's normally best to pat the outside of your meat dry with paper towel. This prevents an accidental wet cooking method (steaming) from happening, which would both halt the Maillard reaction, and cause the meat to cook unevenly. Fortunately, we don't need to dry the meat for the Piccata: we are dredging the chicken in seasoned flour, which desiccates the outside of the chicken, and allows us to dry the meat without kitchen paper. Problem solved!

There is so much more to browning reactions, and we will keep discussing them as we post more recipes.

Quick Pan Sauce

After you sear your butterflied breasts to a nice golden brown, there will be some fat, meat, and flour left over in your pan, stuck to the cooking surface. This is called fond, and is the secret password to big flavour in your food. By making a simple butter sauce, you can take the roasty, savoury gold of the fond, and put it on your plate in a palatable and delicious way. Pan sauces are typically made by

1. Cooking alliums or flavourful things in the left over fat and fond;
2. Deglazing the pan with wine until the alcohol cooks off (you can also use stock and water, adjust your seasoning as necessary)
3. Removing the pan from heat, and;
4. Whisking in cold butter one pat at a time. Our recipe provides enough butter to give the sauce a light cream consistency. However, adding more cold butter gives you a thicker sauce known as Beurre Blanc, which is absolutely heavenly. You decide how far you want to go!

Capers

It looks like an olive colored berry, and tastes like a pickle, but what exactly is a caper? A caper is the unopened flower bud of a Mediterranean bush, and they have been foraged and pickled for thousands of years (though only recently cultivated). They are sold in jars with brine, like pickles or olives, and make for a wonderfully acidic condiment. They tend to work great in chicken and fish dishes, especially the classic lox and cream cheese bagel sandwiches.

How to Make it

Slicing and Dredging

Start by butterflying, or slicing your chicken breasts in half lengthwise, so that they open like a book: a sharp knife is your best friend here. Place your hand flat on top of the breast, and keep your knife blade parallel to the palm of your hand - this will help you cut at a consistent height through the chicken breast. Once they are all butterflied, you should have thin cutlets. Cover them with plastic wrap, and pound them with a mallet (or the side of a clean workshop hammer) until they are thin.

Remove the plastic wrap, wash your hands, take half of your prepared seasoning, then season the breasts on both sides. Add the other half of the seasoning to your flour, mix well, add the mix to a shallow dish (using one with walls will help with clean up later). Place the chicken breasts in the flour, coat completely, tap them to remove any excess, and set aside on a different plate. Repeat until all breasts are dredged in seasoned flour.

Browning

Heat oil in a pan to medium high heat (light olive oil and seed oils are best for sauteing without a bunch of smoke). Once the oil is shimmering, add your chicken cutlets. Cook the chicken until browned (2-3 minutes aside) and remove from the pan. Turn the heat down to medium.

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Sauce, Coating, and Plating

Add shallots, garlic, capers, and lemon zest to the pan, and sauté until fragrant (you aren't ready for how good this smells). Add your white wine: it will make some exciting sizzling sounds as the wine quickly comes to a simmer and begins evaporating all it's water and alcohol, leaving behind the sweet and tart fermented grape flavor. Scrape the fond from the pan. Add lemon juice and broth, and let this simmer for ten minutes.

Add the chicken back in and coat it in the sauce. Let it cook in there for two minutes or so, then remove the chicken and plate it. Once plated, take the pan off heat, and slowly whisk in cold butter until the sauce has thickened a bit.

Top the plated chicken with some sauce and extra capers. For a carb, toss pasta in the remaining sauce. Dig in, and enjoy: this dish is one of our favourites for a reason.

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