
I've always thought that Chicken Piccata was 'fancy', meaning only real chefs could make it. It was something I would have at a restaurant once in a while and not think twice about making it at home.
The last time I enjoyed the dish, I finally decided that it was time to 'un-fancify' it and make it at home myself!
Ingredients:
6-8 boneless chicken breasts
½ cup flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup white wine
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup capers
2 tbsp cornstarch
It turned out that prepping the chicken was alot of fun! Once the fat was trimmed, the chicken had to be flattened. Since it takes a little muscle to get it flat, it was a perfect opportunity to relieve some aggression/stress! To flatten the chicken, the tool of choice is usually a meat tenderizer, but I prefer to use an empty wine bottle. I placed the chicken between two sheets of parchment paper and wrapped the bottle in plastic wrap. I find it more sanitary to wrap the bottle even though it doesn't touch the meat.
The chicken should be evenly flattened and not paper thin in one spot and thick in another. If you’re using a long tool like a bottle or pin, the trick is to switch directions as the meat is getting flatter.

I placed the flattened pieces of chicken in a dish.

To assemble to coating station, I mixed the flour with the salt and pepper and spread it out on a plate.

At this point, I measured the lemon juice and wine and set them aside.


I heated the butter and oil in a large frying pan while I dredged the first piece of chicken in the flour on both sides.


I coated all the pieces in flour and then browned the chicken on both sides until it was almost cooked through. The four will make a very light coating on the chicken and work as a thickening agent for the sauce.


I added the broth and lemon juice to the pan and brought the liquid to a boil for about 2 minutes. I removed the chicken and added the wine. I cooked the sauce over high heat for 5 minutes until the mixture was reduced by about half.


The mixture should thicken as it reduces but it didn't thicken to my liking in this case, so I spooned out some of the liquid and mixed it with the cornstarch. Then I whisked the mixture back in. I plated the chicken and spooned sauce on top of it.

Review:
You can prepare half of this recipe in advance. Do the steps up until you brown the chicken then set your browned chicken in the fridge until you're ready to make your sauce and serve.
This is really easy-to-make and it's a crowd-pleasing dish. The dish had alot of flavour and is not heavy. I made this for six people and everyone liked it.
I would use better chicken broth next time because I didn't like the flavour of it in the dish.
Next time, I would also add some finely chopped lemon zest, double the amount of capers and add about 1/2 cup of wine.
The chicken breasts that I was using were really, really big and I think I could have flattened them more. What I would do next time is cut the chicken into smaller piece before flattening it. I think it would be easier to uniformly flatten a smaller piece of chicken to the desired thickness than a bigger piece.