Xan: Chicken piccata

If you browse the Vongsafood history, you will find many roast chickens. Lately I don't roast as many whole chickens as I used to. I got bored of it, to be honest. Now I often prefer to separate the chicken into parts, and use the dark and white meat for different purposes. In the most recent case, I used the dark meat for a pressure-cooked lentil stew (no photograph sadly, but I will share when I make it again). I saved the breasts for chicken piccata.

Boneless yet skin-on, the best of both worlds. Why do we see either boneless skinless or bone-in skin-on, even though it's hard for consumers to remove bones but easy to remove skin? Why not just leave the skin on in both cases and let us decide for ourselves if we want to remove it? I imagine the blame lies not with Tyson but with consumers who ignore this fact - that skin is easily removed - and that boneless skinless therefore sells much better. PSA: There's recent research that chicken skin is much more healthy than previously believed, being high in "good fats." I'm not sure our definition of "good fats" is done evolving, but that's what I hear lately. In any case, crispy chicken skin is delicious.

Rant aside, it makes little difference to me personally. Breaking down chickens is one of my more favorite kitchen tasks, and by your 100th chicken it's pretty quick, too. I mean, I will never be Jacques Pepin fast even after watching his chicken deboning video dozens of times on Youtube, but...either I don't have time to cook, or I have time to break down a chicken to my preference. Moreover, industrial chicken processing often does a poor job of leaving enough skin on the chicken breast, so your own results will be better.

Anyway, here is my latest chicken piccata:

Generally for any pan sauce lately I will use ghee instead of butter, and thank you mr. liquid soy lecithin for your smooth emulsifying ability.

I have two more chickens in my freezer and am seriously considering doing this again for both of them.

Not pictured above, Pacific Coast Harvest sent me celery root, so I cooked that up too.

I hate the taste of celery, and I guess I was hoping that celery root would taste different. Like you know how cilantro and coriander are from the same plant, but those people who hate cilantro (the leaves) are fine with coriander (the seeds)?  Well, celery root did taste different. It tasted a thousand times WORSE. It was like the unique celery flavor component that I hate but so intense that I couldn't eat it. Broccoli instead to go with my chicken.