What are you crying about?

Boo hoo. I spilled half my coffee this morning and a lot of that went all over my coat, my wonderful warm coat that protects me from the crappy weather outside.

I have no choice but to launder it when I get home, which means I'll have to walk around in my not so warm other coat while I do that. Argh. I am going to the closer but more expensive laundromat to get this done and I'm getting a bottle of wine to go with dinner.

On the bright side I'm making a new chicken dish tonight and my ham an cheese sandwich tastes pretty good right now.

In Chicken News Today

Picture source: Wikipedia

I have never made chicken piccata, but Katie has and she gave me some tips I'd like to share with you. Wikipedia tells me that piccata is an Italian technique whereby you prepare a meat by slicing it, sauteing it and then serving it with a sauce that is made with lemon, butter and spices, which usually means parsley.

These are the steps that Katie took to make her version:

Step 1:

She mixed her dry ingredients. I bet seasoned bread crumbs would work well here.

Then she prepared the chicken cutlets by spraying them with an oil spray and she covered them with the dry mixture.

Step 2:

She sauteed the cutlets. Here is a tip I attribute to Michael Symon and was confirmed last night in a cooking class: don't waste your olive oil on cooking. Use a blended oil (a mixture of cheap olive oil and a neutral oil) or just use a neutral oil. Leave the good stuff for finishing a plate.

When the cutlets were almost ready, Katie squeezed lemon juice over them. Yum! That sounds good.

Step 3:

This is when it gets intense. Are you ready? When the cutlets were cooked, Katie set them aside. She added ten lemon slices, chicken stock and more lemon juice to a separate pot to make her sauce. When the sauce had reduced she dressed her chicken with it. Tada! Chicken Piccata!!

This sounds great. I want to make this soon, along with the recipe I picked up from my cooking class on how to roast a chicken perfectly. Here is the trick: you don't need butter. All you need is a little kosher salt and time. Salt your chicken for a few hours, then take it out and let it get to room temperature and then pop it in the oven at 450 F. You can stuff it with a lemon if you want, but you don't need to add aromatics until the last five minutes or so. Try these tips and be amazed.