Kitchen Lessons From Reality TV
Reality TV is full of important life lessons. #1: If you are a D-list celebrity with a faltering career, your best opportunity for a comeback is to learn ballroom dancing (Dancing with the Stars). #2: If you are a delinquent but athletic young adult with a temperamental personality, focus all your energy on applications for The Real World or Road Rules and you might not have to work for at least 2 decades of your life (Real World/Road Rules Challenge, The Gauntlet I, II, and III). #3: If you want to be a Top Chef, you are expected to know by heart how to prepare soufflé and chicken piccata, but there is no excuse for over-salting your dish (Top Chef).
In the season opener of Top Chef, we watched as the latest batch of chefs was challenged to create their own versions of some classic recipes from lasagna to duck a l’orange. Two chefs, Ryan and Erik, found themselves on the chopping block for not really knowing how to make their “classic dish”, chicken piccata and soufflé respectively. The episode had me wondering, can one really be great chef if certain Italian dishes, such as chicken piccata, are not in your repertoire?
I think the answer is yes and no. First the yes. Yes I think someone can be a Top Chef and not know how to make chicken piccata. The “classic” dishes were perhaps a bit unfairly skewed towards French and Italian dishes. Most culinary schools, and formal kitchen brigades, are based on the French culinary arts. Because of that, one might expect a professional chef to have relatively good knowledge of soufflé, a classic French dish.
But Italian cuisine is not necessarily taught in cooking school (aside from pasta making). So if you never worked in an Italian kitchen and you didn’t cook Italian food on your days off, you might not know your Chicken Piccata from your Chicken Milanese (sorry Ryan).
Furthermore, what determines a classic dish? With a sixth of the world’s population residing in India, I might think that Tandoori Chicken would be a better choice for a classic dish than Chicken Piccata, which hails from a country 1/20th the size of India.
But the answer might also be no, one can’t be a Top Chef without knowing how to make Chicken Piccata for the simple reason that Chicken Piccata is a simple and delicious dish. A Top Chef, or a home chef, should have the curiosity and passion to want to know how to prepare such a classically yummy recipe.
Chicken Piccata is simply a chicken cutlet pounded thin, dredged in flour, pan fried, and served with a lemony pan sauce. The pan sauce is made as a zesty combination of reduced white wine, lemon juice, and butter. It is usually finished off with capers and chopped parsley but can also include garlic or shallots. It is a beautifully simple dish with clean, sharp flavors offset by a side of some plain starch such as pasta or rice.
In the episode of Top Chef, Ryan’s error was to a) not know how to make the original dish and then b) attempt to update a dish that he did not understand in the first place. If you understand the basic principle of a Chicken Piccata, it should be relatively easy to modernize or globalize. You can start small by adding to the pan sauce to make it more seasonal or market fresh, say with the addition of cooked artichoke hearts or pea tendrils for a Spring version. To make a more worldly variation, try substituting rice wine for the white wine, add lemongrass and kaffir lime for the citrus notes, and finish off with cilantro in lieu of the parsley.
With little to gain from the blight of good dramatic television in these post-writers' strike days, much can be gleaned from turning our attention to the world of reality television, particularly in the kitchen lessons of Top Chef. Ryan and his not-so-Piccata chicken were spared this week thanks to a girl who over-salted her shrimp. But the lesson was clear: if you want to be a good cook, or a Top Chef, love food enough to know how to make just about anything, from soufflé to hollandaise to a lemony pan-fried chicken.
Made with rice or pasta, parsley, boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, salt and pepper, flour, olive oil, white wine, lemons, butter, capers
Serves/Makes: 4
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
- salt and pepper
- 1/3 cup flour
- olive oil
- 1 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 2 lemons
- 1 1/2 tablespoon butter
- 2 tablespoons capers, rinsed
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- cooked rice or pasta
Using a sharp chef's knife, slice each chicken breast horizontally in half to form two thin cutlets. Place cutlets between two sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper and pound out to 1/2-inch thickness using a mallet, rolling pin, or heavy pan. Season each cutlet with salt and pepper. Place flour in a shallow plate and dredge each seasoned cutlet in flour.
Heat a good amount of olive oil over medium high heat in a large saute pan. Work in batches to cook cutlets until browned on each side and cooked through, 2-3 minutes per side. Keep cooked cutlets warm on a plate under a foil tent. Add more olive oil as you cook to prevent sticking.
When all chicken is cooked, remove pan from heat and use a paper towel to wipe out any bits sticking to the pan that are burned or too brown and pour off any excess fat.
Return pan to heat and add wine. Bring to a simmer and reduce by half. Use a wooden spoon to get the bits off the bottom of the pan and worked into the sauce.
When wine is reduced, add the juice of two lemons, the butter, and capers, stirring until the butter is melted. Add salt and pepper to taste. Return the cooked chicken cutlets to the pan for a couple of minutes to reheat and coat with the sauce. Turn off heat and sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Serve with cooked rice or pasta.
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