Dinner last night at the McGary Diner was this light, salty, lemony Chicken Piccata. What you don’t see is the bed of zucchini noodles underneath the chicken that we made with the newest addition to the kitchen toys. 🙂 Incredibly delicious, simple and prepared in under 30 minutes. Another ideal weeknight meal.
We have been having the wildest weather swings of late. After a very tame winter with only 1 real freeze, the weather got up to 82 F on Monday. Given the average temp for this time of year is 65 F, 82 F was a little unusual. The skies were blue and the sun shined all day. Tuesday, however, when we awoke the temperature was 35 F. What??? A 48 F temperature drop in roughly 12 hours!!! The high Tuesday only reached 42 F. Wednesday morning the temperature was 32 F yet by 4:00 pm we had achieved 65 F, a typical temperature for this time of year. Today, we started at 47 F and it’s 65 F prior to noon with the expected high to be 70 F. By this weekend it will be rainy with highs in the low 50s F and lows in the upper 30s F. It’s at times like these when fixing dinner presents problems. When it’s 80 F outside, I want to be grilling. At 42 F, I want a nice soup, stew or braise. When the temps swing wildly like they have been doing in February and March it simply confuses me. I get brain lock and am generally uninspired. This leads to going out to eat and boring food around the house. This explains why there weren’t many posts in February. Nevertheless, we are always looking for new things or new ways of doing old things and Baby Lady came to the rescue. I don’t know how Baby Lady found our latest kitchen toy or even where but as we were reading one night getting ready to turn in, she handed me her iPad and asked me what I thought about this kitchen gadget. I was immediately mesmerized. It was precisely the tool I have been looking for when we have sushi, except it did even more. I was so excited I found it on Amazon and immediately bought it. You see, it’s a particular type of vegetable slicer with 3 blades that will make those beautifully fine ribbons of daikon I love with my sushi. Look at these fine carrot ribbons.
Pretty cool, eh? It also makes spaghetti size ribbons and a larger ribbon thicker than spaghetti but thinner than linguini or fettucini. Now, I’m inspired and can make cute salads, fun garnishes for soups and long veggie noodles because it cuts in a circular motion. 😀 Of course, now that I had it, I had to use it and zucchini noodles were what was on the menu. The question was what would we make with the zucchini noodles. We were back in beautiful weather so i wasn’t in the mood for soups or braises. It wasn’t warm enough to make us want a salad. Then I decided, how about a nice chicken piccata with the zucchini noodles. Also, since we were making it low carb with the zucchini noodles, I decided to try rice flour to bread the chicken for a change. It’s a lighter flour and seemed perfect for this application. It was. All of this sounded pretty good so this is what we did.
Ingredients
- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, thinly sliced and pounded scallopini style
- 1/2 cup + 1-1/2 Tbsp rice flour
- 4 Tbsp clarified butter
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 cup chicken broth, preferably homemade
- 2 Tbsp capers, drained
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 2 zucchini
- sea salt & fresh ground black pepper, to taste
Instruction
First things first, we must play with the new kitchen toy. So, make the zucchini noodles.
Put the zucchini over a sink. Liberally salt the noodles and allow to drain for 15 minutes to remove some of the water.
While the zucchini is draining, take the chicken and thinly slice it, roughly 1/2 inch thick.
When sliced, put a layer of plastic wrap over the cutting board and lay the slices on top spacing them so when you pound them they won’t overlap each other. Place plastic wrap on top of the slices.
If you have a meat mallet use it to pound out the slices very thinly, scallopini style. I use a rolling pin. 🙂
Once the chicken is pounded, season it with salt and freshly ground pepper and dredge it in the rice flour.
Add 3 – 4 Tbsp of clarified butter to a skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium high heat.
Once the butter has heated sufficiently, add the chicken slices to the skillet. You will have to work in batches.
Because the chicken is sliced thinly, it will cook very quickly. Once it begins to turn a golden brown around the edges, turn the slices.
When done, remove to a paper towel lined plate or platter and set aside.
Continue until all chicken slices have been cooked. When done, reduce heat to low and add 1 Tbsp flour to the remaining butter in the skillet and stir to incorporate.
Now add the white wine and chicken stock
Lemon juice
capers
and parsley
Stir to incorporate and thicken. If it’s too thick add more wine, lemon juice or chicken stock depending upon your preference. Now add the chicken pieces back to the skillet.
Adding the chicken to the skillet is to allow the chicken to reheat and absorb some of the flavors from the sauce.
When the chicken is in the skillet, rinse and dry the zucchini noodles and add them to a pot of boiling water.
The zucchini noodles are going to cook very rapidly. So, turn the chicken slices over in the sauce.
By that time, the noodles are done. Drain the zucchini noodles in a colander. Get a serving plate and place a mound of zucchini noodles in the middle of the plate.
Arrange the chicken slices around the zucchini noodles.
Spoon any remaining sauce over the chicken, serve & enjoy! Mm good!
REMCooks 
Very neat gadget, handy also when you are making a salad 🙂
I’m thrilled to have found it and bought it. We dearly love sushi and make it periodically but when we make it we always miss the nice daikon threads. Now, we can have them in addition to veggie noodles and salads. 😀
Yummy!!
Thanks for the compliment, Jessica. Hope to see you around. 🙂
Congrats on the new toy, Richard. I see you’ve put it to good use, too. Your zucchini noodles look great and today’s meal delicious! I saw a gadget today that looked like an apple peeler but is used to remove zest from citrus. What will they think of next?
Hi, John. Thanks for the compliment. I just love kitchen toys. They make my heart go pitter-pat. I’m intrigued by the zester you saw. I either use a microplane of a very sharp knife depending upon the use for the zest. I’m still envious of the guy who dreamed up the microplane.
I’ve been wanting to get that exact veggie spiral slicer (not the horizontal one, THAT one), lucky you! The piccata sounds like a great idea, I’m again running out of chicken ideas and am on a citrus kick again. Weird question: is there a fish piccata? My bro-in-law caught a bunch of perch, I panko’ed a dozen filets last night and froze the remaining 6-8 pieces. Was going to make Thai curry, but something in a lemony sauce sounds better!
Thanks, Jennifer. As for the piccata, from what I have read and learned, despite its Italian name, piccata originated in the United States, most probably during the 1930s. The preparation of the dish allegedly resembles Sicilian cooking style as with regards to the addition of capers and lemon slices in the dish. It originally was prepared with veal but in the 1980s became very popular with chicken. Piccata is simply a method of cooking whereby thinly sliced pieces of meat are lightly floured, sautéed in oil/butter and finished with a minute sauce of wine, lemon capers and parsley. I think the perch would be unbelievably delicious done in a piccata style. If you do it, post it on your blog. I’d love to see it.
Right on, I’m gonna make some perch picatta! 😀
Chicken piccata is one of my favorite dishes. What do they say…a man and his toys. Can’t wait to see what else you create.
Hi, Karen. Thanks for the nice compliment. The new “tool” has the gears spinning. This is going to be fun. 😀
I can’t wait…a good cook like you will be dreaming about all the things you can do.
Excellent stuff Richard. I have some envy for your new toy. I also see some pretty fancy pouring shots coming back into the posts. The clarified butter is a stand out. I see you getting in there with a Capone style bashing shot too. Nice work.
Lovely dish indeed.
Best,
Conor
Thanks, Conor. Baby Lady always thinks of you when she catches a nice pouring shot. She liked the capers shot best. Also, there is nothing better than beating a poor helpless piece of meat silly after a long day. 🙂
OMG I have wanted your new kitchen toy for such a long time!! Where did you get it? I must get one 🙂
Hi, Gigi. I found it at Amazon. It’s called a Benriner Kitchen Help slicer. It’s pretty cool. 😀
Great post Richard! Great recipe, great new toy, great photos, great pouring shots, great… well you get the point 🙂
I may have to decide on which kitchen tool to get rid of before buying a new one, but this one definitely looks useful! I don’t think I could make zucchini noodles without it, and it does seem tasty.
Chicken Piccata is one of those American-Italian dishes that do not exist in Italy (although I believe a veal version exists) and I’ve never made it, but it sure sounds good.
Hi, Stefan. Thanks for the nice compliment. Baby Lady loves to do the pouring shots. She really liked the one of the capers. 🙂 I think but am not sure that piccata itself originated in the US. Chicken piccata definitely originated in the US because of the cost of veal and ready availability of chicken. I like veal piccata better but chicken piccata is more healthy and a lot less expensive. The zucchini played beautifully with the dish as it absorbed all the beautiful flavors from the sauce and gave you a different textural element to the dish. I also like taking my aggressions out on a piece of dead flesh. 😉
According to my butcher, eating veal on a regular basis will assure you reach at least your 100th birthday 😉 There are a lot of diifferent sauces for scaloppine that I should really try. I am so fond of saltimbocca that I always make those.
I use a rubber hammer from the hardware store that is intended for hammering bricks into a pavement for my meat bashing. Works like a charm! 🙂
New kitchen toys always deserve a special mention and the turn handle would make for some snappy salads fast (soon for your summer dishes!) I have a portable hand blade/peeler that works quite well for this but I do like those amazing spaghetti strands with the chicken piccata.