When life gives you lemons, make chicken picatta!

Eric and I have been outta town and we left this bag of lemons behind at the house.  I figured, why waste them, so these next 2 days will be dinners using these lemons.  I opened a bottle of red wine before we left and thought I'd make something that goes well with red wine so it didn't go bad either but decided to just drink it while cooking instead.

Last night for dinner we had chicken picatta with a mushroom and thyme quinoa risotto.  There are a lot of steps to making picatta but it actually isn't difficult as long as your "mis en place" is organized and you are ready before you start cooking.

The ingredients for the chicken were:

chicken

lemons

flour

butter

olive oil

salt

pepper

capers

chicken stock

parsley

To start, I cut the butter into 3 parts and flattened the chicken to about 1/4 inch thick.  Really, I just made sure they were all close to the same thickness.  Then I squeezed the lemons for juice, measured out the chicken stock and capers and put all three into one cup since they all go in at the same time.  

I put some flour into a baking dish and dredged the chicken pieces on both sides, shaking off any excess.

Now the cooking begins!  To start, put one of the thirds of butter and some olive oil into a pan and let them  melt together and heat up.  Once it starts to sizzle, add half of the chicken and let it brown on one side.  Once it's brown, flip it over and let it brown on the other side then remove it to a plate.   When the first batch is done, add another third of butter and some more olive oil and repeat the process of browning the chicken on both sides. 

Once your chicken is browned, remove it from the pan and turn off the heat.  At this point, I added the cup of stock, lemon juice, and capers to the pan and put the pan back on the heat.  Once all the liquid came to a boil, I put the chicken back in the pan and let it simmer for about 4 minutes per side in the pan of sauces.  Then, I removed the chicken from the pan and set it on a plate.

Once the chicken has been removed, add your last third of butter (I know I probably seem like Paula Deen right now but I promise it's not as thick or rich as you think b/c of all the lemon...and it's really not THAT much butter for how much liquid and chicken there is) and let the sauce thicken.

The tough part of making this meal is the multitasking os making the chicken while making the risotto at the same time.  Before I started making the chicken, I started with the quinoa.  The ingredients were:

quinoa

chicken stock

mushrooms

onion

garlic

thyme

To start, I put chicken stock into a pot and let it come to a boil.  Then I placed the quinoa in the pot and let it cook until it was done and liquid was absorbed.  Then, I chopped the garlic, onion, and thyme and then stemmed and sliced the mushrooms.  I used crimini but I'm sure you can use whatever you like.  

While the quinoa was cooking, I began cooking the veggies.  To start, I heated up some olive oil and cooked the garlic for a couple of minutes to release flavor.  Before the garlic browned, I dumped the bowl of the remaining ingredients and cooked them until the onions were transparent and the mushrooms were softer.  

Once they were cooked, I added some chicken stock and let it reduce down a bit so it was thicker and not as viscous.

Lastly, the quinoa was added into the mix and just cooked until the liquid was absorbed. 

OK...so the meal is done!  To top everything off, I added a little fresh parsley to the chicken and some parmesan to the risotto.

This meal was pretty dang good.  I made it months ago but I don't think it was after the blog started so I figured I could make this again and not make a repeat blog post.  The risotto was a good balance to the tartness of the lemon in the picatta.  The best thing, I think, about quinoa risotto is that it's not full of the butter that regular risotto can be so it's not as heavy.  That way, if your main is heavier with ingredients, the quinoa can lighten it up and be a good pair.  Definitely make sure you have a good sized stove for this meal b/c it takes up a lot of space with all the pans and pots being used.

Tonight will be another meal with lemons.  Hopefully tonight will be the end of the lemons though and tomorrow night can be something more "savory"..as if chicken cooked in butter wasn't savory enough!