Lemon Chicken

Hi!

I cooked three pounds of chicken last night and as it's one of our family favorites, I thought I'd share the recipe. This is an Italian-style (as opposed to Chinese) lemon chicken made with white wine and capers. Here are the ingredients:

- 3lbs of chicken, trimmed of fat and cut into chunks (~4 to a breast)
- 2 sticks of unsalted butter (not margarine or some other fake crap)
- 1 cup of lemon juice, preferably fresh-squeezed (it makes a difference)
- 1 cup of white wine; use one you like, single-serving bottles are enough
- 1 3.5oz jar of non-pareil capers, drained; use more if you like
- Enough olive oil; use the best you can find, Canola is never the answer!
- A coating mix that is half-flour and half-garlic powder

Heat the pan to medium-high, between six and seven out of ten on my range. Pre-heat the oven to ~200 degrees. (This will make sense later.) Put some olive oil in the pan; how much depends on the stickiness of the pan and your penchant for olive oil. Coat a piece chicken in the flour/garlic mix and drop it in the pan. Repeat until the pan is full, but not so full that you can move the chicken around with a shake of the pan. After a few minutes, flip the chicken over. When the chicken is done, transfer it to something you can keep in the oven. This will keep the cooked chicken warm while you finish the rest...

After the chicken is all cooked and in the oven, pour the lemon juice into the pan. Don't clean the pan first! If there are stuck bits of chicken, let them be a part of the sauce... Let the juice simmer for a few minutes. Pour in the wine and stir for a bit. Let it all simmer for a few minutes. Cut the butter into patty-sized chunks and melt it into the pan. Don't let it just sit there; stir constantly so that the butter, lemon juice, and wine are mixed together very well. After the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth, pour in the capers. Stir for a bit, then pour the sauce over the chicken.

The whole chicken/sauce mixture can stay in the oven while you prepare the rest of the meal. We usually have this with pasta, but it's good with rice and by itself. If you choose pasta, pick one with a lot of surface area so that the sauce will stick to it. Keep in mind that three pounds is enough to feed six to ten people. If you want to cook less chicken, don't cut the sauce recipe by the same proportion. The least amount of sauce I'd recommend is half of what's given above, even if you only cook one-quarter the amount of chicken...



Enjoy!
Matt