I have finally made a perfect Chicken Piccata. One of my favorite foods. So simple so elegant, and sooooo good when perfect, but so may ways to slighly screw up, thus imperfecting the dish. Not pounding the chicken perfectly flat so there is one elump that will be undercooked, or the rest will be over cooked. Not getting the flour coating right, Not getting the pan and oil to the right temperature so it sticks. Not cooling the pan to the right temperature so the butter wine and lemon blend into a perfect sauce, not reducing the wine the right amount so it is watery, putting herbs in too soon and hurting their flavor etc.
But after about 7 tries over 4 months or so tonight’s reached my standards of perfect Piccata
Next to spluge on veal and make Veal Piccata.
What are your most recent food triumphs?
Last night I cooked some beautiful rib eye steaks in my new cast iron skillet and they were incredible. Better than almost any I’ve had in a restaurant (even some of the fancy ones here in Chicago.) Not as good as a Gibson’s steak, but close.
She used a Cuisine at Home recipe to make some truly amazing Chiles Rellenos.
Using carbonated water in the batter, the coating turned out light and fluffy and delicious, as the chiles cooked through just enough, the cheese was melted perfectly, and the whole thing absorbed minimal oil.
So the Chile Relleno was perfect, the gazpacho that accompanies needs a bit of work though.
Pimiento cheese. (Okay, maybe not perfected, but a damn sight better than what I’m used to). If you think of it as a mayonnaisy abomination unto the eyes of Cheese, try it like this:
Put things in a food processor, as follows:
-Two cloves garlic; process.
-About 6 oz extra-sharp cheddar in cubes
-About 2 oz cream cheese
-About 2 Tbsp mayonnaise
-About 2 Tbsp pimientos
-A generous dash of cumin, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne. Process.
Sadly, my cooking seems to be getting worse lately. Things I’ve cooked, like, a zillion times before. But I have learned to cook steel-cut oats so they are just the right consistency.
Roast potatoes. Peel, cut, boil, oil while still in the saucepan, then lid that sucker and shake shake shake. Salt, baking tray, patience. Start cooking ahead of putting the meat in the oven, and keep them going about 15 mins past when they’re “ready”. Somewhere along the way pull them out of the oven and drizzle a little olive oil/chicken fat/whatever on each individually. When cooked, consume immediately. Rough, crunchy and magnificent on the outside, dreamy creamy on the inside. Magnificent.
Alfredo sauce. Yeah, I know, it’s easy, but it took me a while to perfect. I used to love the Olive Garden’s alfredo (again, I know, but I still think they make an OK alfredo), but the last time I was there, I said to my husband, “My alfredo’s better than this.”
Asian buffalo wings. Real buffalo wings are a bit harsh for me, although I love the general concept. So I mellowed them out by using bottled thick teriyaki sauce and spicing it up generously with sambal olek, fresh grated ginger and garlic, Chinese fermented black beans and key lime juice.
As a matter of fact, I have two huge foil trays of them down in my car in a cooler right now. We’re having a St. Paddy’s Day potluck today, and I made a huge batch of my recently-perfected wings. Not traditional, but who cares?
Meatloaf. My secret is to mix it with my kitchen aid till there’s very little definition in the meat - really, so it’s like a paste. Same goes for meatballs.
Not yours, but I’ve had dense meatloaf and meatballs in the past, and that’s exactly why they have that consistency. What’s important is that YOU like them. My opinion is just that.
Well, I don’t know if I’ve perfected it yet, but I made 5 batches and 3 of them were pretty darned good. The other two tasted fine, but one was a tad too soft and the other was a tad too hard. The later batches were near-perfect though.
This is, however, a dangerous thing to know how to make.
Beef stew. The trick I discovered is to use Trader Joe’s Sierra Leone porter beer, which has a slight coffee taste – gives the broth a great bite to it.
Sometimes simplest is best. I recently split a zucchini long ways, brushed it with olive oil and kosher salt and pepper and roasted it on a greased pan at 400 for 15 minutes. Then I put shavings of parmesan on it and put it back in for 5 minutes. It. Was. Divine.