Thalia Learns to Cook: Sauces!

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make!  Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

To my mind, a major component that separates the meal made at home from the fancy schmancy made in a restaurant is the presence of a sauce.  Sauces are delicious. They add flavor, moisture and depth to otherwise plain ole’ pieces of chicken, fish, etc.  However, they are difficult to make and make well. Although I haven’t been doing much new cooking as of late (see: 5 month old who is cute and smiley and doesn’t think sleeping is something he should be doing), I have been starting to venture into the world of sauces. And also panko bread crumbs (which are amazing and the subject of another post).

Tonight, we decided to make a lemon caper chicken.  Or rather, chicken breasts with lemon-caper sauce. What is a caper? I have no idea. But it’s small and salty and goes well with lemon.  Plus, we had some delicious rose wine that had to be drunk. 

Delicious Rose wine.

Gone are the days where opening a bottle of wine means finishing it in the same night. Nope, we have become 1-glass with dinner people. Mostly because any more than that and I will fall face first, dead asleep, into my lemon-caper chicken. So, there was extra wine. On with the recipe!

 Ingredients (Recipe taken from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-with-lemon-caper-sauce/)

• 1 pinch salt (I omitted this- the capers have so much salt in the sauce, no salt needed for the chicken).

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (You actually need way less than this, just enough to coat the chicken).

• 2 (6 ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (I cut these down to even out the cooking)

•  2 tablespoons olive oil (I also added some onion into the pan with the oil, only because I had left over cut up onion from some guacamole I had made earlier. Hate to let some cut up onion go to waste. It’s like you cried for nothing).

• 1/4 cup dry white wine (I used dry Rose. It was delicious).

•  1/4 cup lemon juice (I used a mix of fresh lemon and jarred lemon juice. It ended up being a bit too lemony- so next time I will use less).

• 1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces (I used pastured butter. Um, pastured butter is the best thing in the whole world. Find some, buy it, eat it, and be happy).

• 2 tablespoons capers, drained (I didn't drain them- it made the sauce a bit salty, but it was a good thing).

• 2 lemon wedges (As mentioned, the sauce ended up pretty lemon-y, so extra lemon was unnecessary. Your experience may vary). 

Directions

1.     Mix together salt and flour in a small dish or plastic bag, then coat chicken and shake off excess. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Shake excess flour from chicken, then brown in hot oil until both sides are golden-brown, and the inside has turned white and firm, 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Chicken dredged in flour. The word dredged is funny. 

Traditionally, I have a problem just letting the darn chicken cook. Leave it alone! Let it cook!  So now I set a timer, 3 minutes and turn. 3 minutes and flip. 3 minutes and turn. 3 minutes and flip.  Then it's done.  I get impatient.  So, instead of futzing with the chicken as it cooked (Leave it alone!) I took a picture of the timer on my microwave. That's how I roll.

39 seconds to flip!

2.     Remove the chicken, and set aside. Pour white wine into the skillet, and allow to boil as you dissolve the cooked bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the lemon juice, and allow to come to a boil, cook for a few minutes until reduced by half.

The wine almost bubbled away! Nooooo!

My stovetop is hot, so this took no time at all.  Beware, you might want to remove the pan from the heat to avoid losing all of your wine and/or lemon juice. 

3.     Sprinkle the cubed butter into the boiling sauce. Swirl and shake the pan vigorously to dissolve the butter, thus thickening the sauce. The butter must never come to rest, or the sauce will separate and become oily. Once the butter has completely incorporated, remove from heat and stir in capers.

I was stirring so fast, you can't even see my hand! I'm speedy. 

So, this instruction had me totally freaked out, and is the reason sauces are something I've tried to avoid.  It seems so easy to just mess it all up if you're not moving quick enough.  But, if you prep ahead of time (an important lesson!!), then it goes relatively smoothly.  Happily, my sauce did not break. Or if it did, I didn't notice.  Whatever, this much butter? It was delicious. 

4.     To serve, pour lemon-caper sauce over the chicken, and serve with a wedge of lemon.

Delicious!

I served with a salad: greens, tomato, red pepper goat cheese. The sauce was also a nice salad dressing. 

So was it delicious? 

Yes it was!