The Tale of a (not) Indian Princess

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  Well, let me tell you the tale of my attempt at creating an Indian like dish. 

Once upon a time, there was a young princess named Taneasha (Just go with it.  It’s my story, I can tell it how I want).  Although she had a name that was foreign, odd, or at the very least not befitting her, it was certainly not Indian.  In spite of that, and the fact that she was far too lazy to put in the effort to do it properly, she decided to try her hand at preparing a fabulous Indian delight.  With merely the intention of creating a dish that resembled the flavors and structure of Indian cuisine, she gathered her ingredients and set to work. 

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 medium onion
½ inch piece of ginger
4-5 garlic cloves
1 cup diced tomatoes with juice
½ cup coconut milk
½ water
¼ teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
¼ cup water (additional)
1 Tablespoon flour

First, she cut the chicken into bite sized cubes and set it aside.  Next came the chopping.  She peeled the ginger and garlic cloves and minced them as fine as a mere knife would allow. 

Next came the onion, but not quite as fine. 

While the oil was heating in a pan over medium heat, she measured all the spices (garam masala, coriander, turmeric, cumin, and paprika) into a small dish and stirred them together. 

Then, into the pan went the onion, and the salt was sprinkled over the top.

After about a minute or two of stirring it around, the garlic and ginger were added.  She continued to stir them about in the pan until the onion was nice and soft and translucent, about 5 – 7 minutes, before sprinkling the spice mixture over the top. 

She knew the spices shouldn’t be exposed to the heat for very long before having liquid added, so she quickly mixed them into the onions and added the chicken. 

After a mere 30 seconds, she poured in the tomatoes and water. 

Of course, Taneasha’s servants always bottled tomatoes from the palace gardens while they were in season, but commoners could probably make do with store bought if necessary. 

She placed a lid over the chicken mixture and allowed it to simmer for 15 minutes.  This was good, because she was far overdue for some lemonade and a foot rub.  The servants did, of course, stir it every few minutes to keep it from burning. 

Refreshed and relaxed, she returned to the stove and poured in the coconut milk. 

To her delight as she stirred it in, it was starting to resemble Indian dishes that had been prepared for her before. 

To thicken things up just a bit, she mixed together the flour and water, and stirred them into the pan.  When the mixture was thick and smelled fabulous, she spooned it over rice and added a piece of freshly baked naan.  (Remember our pitas?  I told you frozen ones would come in handy)

Proud of her accomplishment, Taneasha dished a plate for her prince and watched, eagerly awaiting his response as he took his first bite.  To her dismay, it was not a look of delight, but of repulsion.  As it turned out, the prince detested coriander.  Even the princess was somewhat disappointed in the results.  Although it didn’t taste bad, it could have used some more complex flavors.  At the very least a tablespoon of honey or sugar, and even better would have been some mango puree and/or red bell pepper. 

Perhaps princesses should leave the cooking to professionals, or at least stick to something more in their league. 

In all seriousness, I had a meal made with one of these simmering sauces from a jar last week.  It took maybe 20 minutes to prepare and was fabulous.  Much better than this two hour investment in disappointment.  Lesson learned.       

Chicken Picatta

Of course, when I made this, I didn't measure anything. Unless I'm baking, I rarely actually measure, and even then I play fast and loose with teaspoons and quarter cups. So, I'm basing  the proportions in this recipe on the pictures. And I'm promising to write shit down from now on. I will. Totally will. If I remember.

Chicken Piccata

What you need:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 c flour
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 c parsley, chopped and packed into the measuring cup^
• 1/4 - 1/2 c white wine (or white grape juice, stock, or other liquid of your choice)
• 1 1/2 c chicken stock
• 1 tbsp capers
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1/4 c grated romano or parmesan cheese
• about 1/2 lb of pasta

Recipe Guy made this but used basil instead of parsley and highly recommends it as a substitute.

What you gotta do:

If you're working with one cutting board, and aiming to use only one, you're going to want to chop all the fresh stuff first, and then deal with the chicken later. Since one board used is only one board to wash, that's what I'm going to say I did. It's the most probable sequence of events.

** Put water on to boil for the pasta. **

Chop the parsley. Zest the lemon and finely mince the zest. (mince it finer than this pic).

Cut the lemon in half and juice both halves.

This is a little more like what the zest should look like. And yes, it's a gratuitious extreme closeup.

Okay, that's it for the fresh stuff. Fast and easy.

Now the bird. If you've never "butterflied" a chicken breast before, now's your chance. It sounds fancy but really, it's just a way to get the chicken thin enough to cook really fast, and go a lot further. Yes, you could pound the shit out of it with a wine bottle, but when you do that, you actually break the flesh apart; it will crumble in the pan much the way ground beef does. Not the goal here. You're going to have to find some other means of venting your frustrations.

So, to "butterfly" a chicken breast, you want to lay it flat on the cutting board and hold it in place with the palm of your hand. Hold it! You don't want it flying away on you.

With the knife parallel to the cutting board and your hand, start at the top of the breast and draw the blade, still flat (you tilt, you bleed; keep it flat) toward you.

When you get to the end of the knife, check your progress. Since you're being careful and going slowly, you're probably only half way through. Reinsert the knife where the flesh is still joined, and repeat until you make it just about through to the other side.

Now, if you were aiming for a real "butterfly" this is where you'd stop. Me I want a bunch of small thin peices of chicken, so I kept going and cut it into two pieces. Actually, because the breasts were a little thick, I re-butterflied them. I cut each breast into thirds. Doing this can make two chicken breasts go a long way.

Yes, that is only two boneless skinless chicken breasts. No they were not mutants. Those pieces are very thin. You'll see just how thin as they're cooking.

Wait, that's a different cutting board. Apparently I had to wash two.

Before the chicken get into the pan though, it needs to be dredged. Fancy schmancy food word for "coat in flour". So a few recipes I checked before I started (no, I wasn't totally winging it as I cooked, I'm just winging it as I tell you what I did) suggested adding either cheese or zest to the flour. I added both.

It was a total waste of cheese and zest. Neither actually stuck to the chicken. Don't bother. Just use flour, with a little salt and pepper if you'd like.

Before you start dredging though (you know, when I worked at the sawmill, dredge had a whole different meaning) you want to get your pan heating. Medium high, olive oil in it.

Once the pan is warm, dredge a tiny piece of chicken in the seasoned (but not cheesey or zesty) flour, and check the temperature. It should bubble around the edges and start to look cooked almost instantly.

No, that's not as much oil as it looks like, it's just a tiny piece of chicken.

So, since the oil is hot, start dipping your thin slices of chicken into the flour. Coat them all over, shake off the excess,

and lay them in the pan. Do the biggest peices first because they'll need the longest to cook.

 Even still, they'll be looking pretty cooked by the time you get the last pieces in the pan.

Once everybody is in, you're probably going to need to start flipping. These, I flipped a little early, they aren't quite golden enough, and I had to turn them a second time to finish the browning.

Ideally what you want is something that looks a little more like this second extreme food close up:

Golden brown and delicious. Now you see why the pan and oil had to be so hot. You want to get this browning in just a few minutes because those are some thin pieces of bird.

Once everybody is nicely tanned, take them out of the pan, and keep them warm somewhere.

If you aren't using wine, you can use an extra 1/4 c of stock, white grape juice, or a combination of lemon juice and stock in this step.

Pour 1/4 c of your chosen liquid into the hot pan. It's going to bubble and fiz and that's good.

That bubbling is lifting all the yummy golden bits of chicken and flour off the pan and into your sauce. Stir to encourage them off the bottom and into the liquid.

It's going to thicken pretty quick as you lose water to evaporation, so add the lemon juice to keep it liquidy.

Bring that to a boil and slowly add the stock. You want to keep this sauce hot and reducing in volume.

We're not aiming to be able to coat pounds of pasta with the sauce, but more to create a hot "dressing" for it and the chicken.

Once you've added all the stock, and it's simmering nicely, toss in the zest and the capers.

Now, you can turn the heat down to medium low. You've cooked your chicken, deglazed the pan, reduced your sauce and added the seasonings. The final step to finishing the sauce is ... butter.

Oh yes, butter.

This is the French influence on what appears to be an otherwise Itanlian dish. Finishing a sauce with butter gives it a certain smoothness and gloss. It softens the sharpness of the lemon, and sweetens the salt of the briney capers.

And, well, it's butter.

But you don't want to boil it, just melt it, that's why you've turned your heat down.

Yeah, looks a lot richer than it did a few minutes ago, doesn't it?

Once you've melted all the butter into the sauce, you can return the chicken to the pan. You just want it in there long enough to get coated. Now is also the time for parsley.

*goes back and edits earlier part of post to remind you to boil water and pasta*

Now that your chicken is done, and your pasta is cooked...

see, it is:

Put it all together on a plate.

Top with a sprinkle of cheese, and serve with a glass of whatever wine you used in the sauce.

Want a bite?

I really did have a few recipes handy as I was making this, I just didn't make a note of the changes I made to them. I do that kind of thing a lot. Sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes, like with this, it does. Unfortunately, because I forgot to write it down as I was cooking, it looks like I'm pantsing my butt off here, when really, it was a perfectly plotted meal.

What do you make by winging it?