Chicken Francese with Lemon and Wine

I still have a bunch of lemons and have been looking at recipes to use them. I love chicken piccata but the last recipe I tried (from Penzey’s One) had a ton of butter in it. It tasted good, naturally, but I didn’t feel good eating it. This recipe from Rachael’s "365" cookbook sounded promising. It’s not exactly a piccata and not exactly francese, a little bit of both.

I used chicken thighs instead of breasts, and pounded them out thin. Then they are dredged in flour, dipped in egg, and then pan fried. I added a tiny minced clove of garlic and mushrooms to the sauce, and used chicken broth instead of wine. Everything went on top of some egg noodles.

The chicken was moist and the sauce had lots of flavor. The egg coating added a rich taste to the chicken. And even though it has butter in it, I felt good eating it, it was very light-tasting. As Rachael would say, "You could certainly entertain with this dish" - it was pretty on the plate, I thought.

It took me about 45 minutes to prepare. I did a mise en place this time, since everything comes together quickly in the end. It saved a lot of frantic scurrying to get ingredients ready while something was cooking. Everything was chopped, pounded, sliced, and ready to go. I think that’s why Rachael is able to do her 30 minute meals, so gets everything as prepared as possible beforehand.

She is coming to Dallas next week for a booksigning at Borders. I don’t think I will be able to attend. The tour schedule is online at http://www.rachaelray.com/bookTour.html. She’ll be in cities from Boston to Seattle, and every town in between. I wish she were signing books somewhere closer to me but she is only doing Dallas and Houston. I’d love to hear how it goes if anyone gets to attend in their area.