Oh me oh my is it wacky how good a meal can taste after a long day. With seminar canceled and our Tech class online, yesterday was all set to be my big homework day. The plan was solid until I factored in my body’s need for sleep, lunch with my dad, and plans with my friend took priority. I was determined to squeeze in one school-related task that day, though, and as it so happened, that task was going to be cooking dinner. 

My coworker was telling me about this great cooking site called Spend With Pennies, which has a lot of easy and yummy recipes for comfort food. I cruised through it until I found a yummy picture with chicken and capers in it, and as we have both at my home, my destiny was quickly determined by the universe. 

Here’s the recipe for Holly Nilsson’s Chicken Piccata!

I started out by grabbing the 6 pieces of chicken I had defrosted that morning, then I coated them in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper and lemon rind. I’ll admit, the recipe said to beat them with a mallet to tenderize them, but the only thing available was a hammer, so I elected to just use the chicken breasts as they were rather than jeopardizing their taste and consistency with construction tools. Anyways, into an oiled frying pan they went to get browned – they took about 2 minutes on each side, and I gave them a little extra time because for some reason that either relates back to my childhood or stems from Minecraft, I have a deep seated fear of raw chicken.  

It was at this point that my sister volunteered to help! Well, I say volunteered…

Lauren: Is that wine?

Me: It’s for the Chicken Piccata 

Lauren: Might there be a glass for little old me? 

Me. If you make rice there will be

Bribery goes a long way, folks 😉 With Lauren working on some rice, I finished cooking the chicken breasts, set them aside, then melted ¼ cup of butter in the pan. I whisked 1 ½ tbsp of flour into the buttery chicken-y mixture, and after cooking it for a minute I slowly added 1 cup of chicken broth. This was soon followed by the juice of half a lemon, ½ of white wine (and 2 glasses for the chefs, of course), and three tbsp of capers. I simmered it for about 3 minutes and oooooh my goodness did it smell delectable. It’s a deceptive scent too; it smells like a very rich, fancy dish despite the limited ingredients within it. Adding the cooked chicken breasts to the sauce and letting them soak it up and reheat was the last step of the evening. Or so I thought…

I have a bad habit of forgetting garnishes – I blame it on the excitement that arrives when food is ready and moments away from consumption. In any case, I totally forgot to add the parsley to the finished product, but this fact did not detract from how scrumptious this meal was. My father and sister were deeply impressed, and my admiration even grew this morning as I ate its leftovers for lunch at work. This whole cooking endeavour probably took about 40 minutes, which was more than worth it for these results. I also got to spend a lovely evening with my sister, so the whole experience has my seal of approval. 

Six weeks of cooking down, more epic recipes to follow! 

Credits to Holly Nilsson for the recipe!