Alright, I'll give you guys the Chicken Francese to start. This was way easier than I thought it would be and really, really tasty:
You need boneless/skinless chicken breasts, Olive oil, flour, minced garlic, 1 lemon, butter, white wine, chicken stock.
Take the chicken breast and cover the bottom and top with selifane on a cutting board. Take your pan and pound them flat. not completely flat to the point that they are shredding, but a nice cutlet sort of width....maybe an inch wide at it's thickest point. I had to turn the pan sideways and pound them with the edge for the most part.
Now cover the pan in olive oil and bring it up to medium heat. You don't want to cook anything in oil until it is hot enough to sizzle whatever you are putting into it. ( A common mistake most home cooks make is they put oil in the pan and then put the chicken or whatever in as it's coming up to temp. You always want to heat the oil first.) As the oil is heating here get a dish to put some flour into.
You don't need much flour. You are just going to "dredge" the chicken through the flour so it has a light coating (I used to make the mistake of wetting chicken before doing this which is wrong. it makes it cake up and it's nasty. leave the chicken with just it's juices). Put a pretty good amount of salt and pepper in with the flour. Take the chicken and run both sides through the flour mix. This is really just a dusting of flour, so you don't need much at all.
Make sure your oil is hot enough to cook (a drop of water in it will tell you) and then lay the breasts in the hot oil. You don't want it too hot to the point of smoking though. No really need to go over medium heat in this whole process. Make sure the chicken doesn't stick to the pan.
You are going to let that cook to a nice golden brown on one side, then flip it over to brown at the same level on the other side. So while you have about 10 minutes for this to happen, get your lemon out and cut some wheels. I used about 1 quarter inch width wheel per chicken breast. Maybe throw in an extra one for good measure. Lemon is a pretty important component of the dish. Get your wine, butter, garlic and chicken stock out and ready too. So you have all that stuff waiting by the pan as the 2nd side of your chicken is becoming golden.
Make a little room in the pan now and drop in a decent sized tab of butter, maybe a tbsp and a half. Place the butter in an open section of the pan, let it melt for a few second and then put your garlic in (just need a little bit to your taste....it's really optional if you're not a garlic fan) You can put the lemon wedges in now too or wait until you add the wine and stock. Stir it around as the butter melts, but you aren't going to do this for more than about a minute, if that. Maybe 30 seconds or so. You don't want anything to brown here including the garlic. A few pieces can get brown, but that's not ideal.
After about a minute pour some white wine and chicken stock in the pan. You want maybe about 1/2 cup or 3/4 cup of wine and maybe a little less chicken stock. You're basically going to have the sauce about 1/2 way up the chicken as it sits in the pan. (The amount of wine and stock depends on how much chicken too. I was cooking a 3 breast pack.)
Stir it all around so everything - butter, wine, lemon, garlic - is mixed up together and let that come to a nice simmer. I let it simmer pretty heavily (not quite a boil) for about 10 minutes. I may have even bumped it up to a medium high for small increments here.
The sauce will reduce a little and thicken ever so slightly. The chicken should be done after about this much time. Just before you are ready to take it off the heat, break off a small tab of butter and let it melt and mix up in there. Once it's about done melting just kill the heat. That butter will thicken the sauce up nicely. It will also of course thicken once it is off the heat too, so keep that in mind as you are judging when to kill the heat. You can always add a little chicken stock if it gets too thick.
So that's all there is to it. I boiled some angel hair pasta as the chicken was simmering. Drain and plate the pasta, place the chicken on top and then pour a little of the sauce over it all. If you want it to look nice, take one of the lemon wheels and lay it right on top of the chicken.
One other thing, if you want to incorporate a side dish into this meal you can slice some snow peas or zuchini nice and thin and throw them into the simmer. Otherwise, maybe just have a salad on the side. That's what I did. Hope you enjoy. I'll post another dish tomorrow.
