Another Family Recipe
this one from my Italian-American side
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I love a home-cooked weeknight dinner, and I really don’t seem to cook for myself nearly enough. (ahem, this is a not-so-subtle hint to all of my friends reading this that you should invite me over for dinner sometime please and thank you.)
I know you know that I have been on a hot dog kick for quite some time, but lately I have been craving chicken. Yes, I always seem to make a chicken cutlet, but there is something incredibly tedious about the breading procedure that I don’t always fancy after a long day.
Recently, I turned to our family cookbook for inspiration (I’m not the only cookbook author in the family). A few years ago, my mom compiled a bunch of our family recipes into a little spiral notebook. I know many of you out there have copies that she has shared. I’m curious how many of you have actually cooked from it?
Regardless, I have. I even share the recipe for Vinegar Peppers from it in my upcoming cookbook, Cheesy (have you ordered your copy yet??).
Like many recipes passed down through generations, a lot of the recipes in this cookbook make no sense at all. There’s a lot of unclear instructions paired with ingredients without clear quantities.
One such recipe is my Uncle Bernard’s Chicken Francese.
Chicken Francese is an Italian-American dish of chicken breasts pounded thinly, dipped in flour and egg, and pan-fried. They’re paired with a lemony white wine sauce and often served with pasta and bread.
I’m gonna share the recipe in the cookbook below so you can see what I’m dealing with when attempting to cook from this book.
Lucky for me, this is a recipe that exists in the world, and many people have an actual recipe shared online. But read those instructions and tell me it makes sense, please.
Anyway, I made this recipe (well, I made my version of this recipe) and it came out great. Since tomatoes are coming into season, I decided to add some to it because I thought it would taste nice and go well, and guess what? I was right—yay!
I have a kind of sad confession to make though. I didn’t write this recipe down. I just made it. I didn’t test it, nothing.
So I have nothing to share in terms of a recipe. Sorry.
BUT. I can kind of write a version of it here, which might still be helpful…at least maybe a little more helpful than the recipe in the family cookbook.
The Procedure:
Beat 2 large eggs in a large shallow bowl.
Season some all-purpose flour in another shallow bowl with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Thinly pound chicken breasts or boneless / skinless chicken thighs. I used thighs.
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium. Dredge the chicken in the flour, then the eggs. Immediately add the chicken to the skillet and cook, flipping once, until golden and cooked through.
Transfer the chicken to a dish to rest.
Thinly slice a lemon and add it to the skillet. Cook the slices, flipping them once, until they’re golden as well. Add a pint of cherry tomatoes and cook, shaking the skillet as needed, until the tomatoes begin to burst. Remove the lemons slices and add 1/4 cup white wine and 3/4 cup chicken stock. Squeeze in the juice of another lemon and cook until the sauce has reduced slightly, maybe like 5 minutes or so.
Add in 6 tablespoons of butter, one cube at a time, mixing well until the butter has melted and emulsified in the sauce before adding more butter. Add any juices from the chicken to the sauce.
Place the chicken on a serving platter and top with the lemon slices and the sauce. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with pasta or crusty bread.
I’m seeing I didn’t add any garlic or shallot to this, which I regret. You should do that, probably around the time when you remove the lemons and before you add the white wine and chicken stock.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
Really? The nerve! Poor Uncle Bern can't defend himself! I didn't see tomatoes in his recipe. And you cut back the wine and added eggs and flour? And Aunt Fran said this was his best recipe! ( but I must say yours looks great and makes sense!)