Chicken piccata is a firm favourite during our summer holidays. I cook it on a frequent basis while we are away because the ingredients are simple to find and even simpler to throw together. We use Paltrow’s recipe, but honestly I barely need to look at it now because I have made it so many times.
Roll back one million years and the first meal Tom and I cooked together in the summer of 1990 (yes, I did warn you it was one million years ago) was a chicken, garlic, lemon and white wine construction that bears a suspicious resemblance to Roman’s recipe. We did not have chilli or capers back then because our taste buds and culinary confidence were still in nappies, but it had all the garlic, lemon and white wine feels. Her recipe also does not involve dredging the chicken in flour or pounding it which is interesting when you consider that the word piccata literally means to pound flat. It does, however, make life far easier when the weather is roasting and your main ambition is to spend as little time as possible standing over a stove, let alone whacking chicken with a rolling pin.
Tate and I ate this one evening and thoroughly enjoyed it. Roman suggests serving it with noodles or pearl couscous. I served it with mash for me and chips for Tate because sometimes all the carbs is exactly what a dish like this calls for. So while Tate was keen to maintain the tradition of chicken piccata the next time we are on summer holiday, I may well crack open this recipe as it will end up with me being less of a hot mess over a hob.
This recipe is the reason that “Simply Nigella” is on my high-rotation bookshelf, and remain there until the end of time.
As I’ve written before, Nigella’s chicken shawarma is in our Top Five Favourite Family Recipes. (I’ve capitalised that because it seems important, and it is.) Not only does my immediate family love it, and request it when they come for dinner, but my extended family as well.
I’ve made this for the four of us. I’ve made this for 16 of us. It is the very definition of easy– the most complicated part is remembering to marinade at least six hours before, or preferably overnight. It’s great for those times when you don’t know when you’ll need to make dinner, because by the time it’s marinated, all it takes is another 30 minutes in the oven.
And so it came to pass this weekend when my brother-in-law was visiting. He and my husband had been gone all weekend and returned late on Sunday. I also had the good fortune of being in Deptford Saturday so I could go to the Turkish supermarket and stock up on the very best hummus ever, along with other delicious goods we could have with this.
My brother in law was delighted, and deemed that for all future Goodwood visits (he comes every year for it), I make this on Sunday night. I’m more than happy to oblige.
One of the first things I do when I pick up a new cookbook is flip through to see if it has a roast chicken recipe. (The other thing I check is the fish chapter, but that’s another story.) So given my ongoing search for the Holy Grail of roast chicken recipes, I immediately turned to the roast chicken recipe in this book. After an extremely busy summer, it felt really comforting to have a Sunday roast to look forward to.
Unfortunately, I made the rookie mistake of not reading my own previous review, because of course I’d cooked this before. And guess what — history repeated itself. The leeks once again carbonised into sad little charcoal ribbons, and there was still no gravy in sight. And honestly, if there’s no gravy and the vegetables have turned to ash, can we really call it a proper roast chicken recipe? (On the plus side, the honey za’atar roasted parsnips and carrots from Ghayour’s latest book Persiana Easy, shown above, were a triumph.)
However, all this reminded me of a reader’s comment from last month, asking if we could share our top five roast chicken recipes from all the cookbooks we’ve covered. Naturally, I had my list ready in about three seconds flat. We’ve cooked a frankly indecent number of roast chickens in our time on cookbookamonth, but the memorable ones stand out — not least because their pages are splattered beyond recognition. So here are the recipes that have been (or still are) on heavy rotation in our kitchen:
1. Zuni Roast Chicken, from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers Yes, it takes up a ridiculous number of pages, but it has become my ultimate go-to. Crispy skin, real gravy, layers of flavour — it’s the gold standard. And yes, it is worth brining the chicken the day before. Trust me on this.
5. Monday Chicken Dinner, from Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly I’ve only made this once, but it was sensational — the sort of recipe that makes you say “why don’t I cook like this every Monday?” I must try this one again!
This is the story of dinner and the spices it needs.
Now saffron is one of those exotic spices that’s expensive (which makes sense, given how laborious it is to harvest it) but also one that I don’t use all that often. However, when I saw this recipe, I knew we wanted to try it, I just needed to find my saffron first.
I knew it was hiding in the highest, upper-left shelf of my spice rack. Don’t ask me how I knew that, I just did. So when I pulled it out– along with some very old cake icing tubes dating from the early noughts, which I promptly threw away–I was curious just how old it was.
Hold on to your hats, friends. My saffron was from 2006. Tony Blair was prime minister. George W. Bush was the U.S. president. Both of our children were still in single digits, age wise. It’s also worth mentioning that it survived a kitchen renovation in 2009. Suffice it to say, it was old. But again, given how much it costs, I can understand my desire to hold on to it.
I checked to see if it was still good, and it was. Huzzah. Though comparing the photos of my dish to Yasmin’s, perhaps my saffron has lost some of its pungency, but that’s okay.
Lest I get lost in strong feelings of saudade, thinking about how different life was for us in 2006, I went about cooking it. Like all the other fab recipes in this cookbook, it was straightforward, but with enough tweaks to make it interesting. We loved it, and even said we could see this dish going into our regular rotation of weeknight dinners. It was that good.
And the saffron? I only needed half of what I had, so I’ve got some for the next time I make it. Hopefully it won’t be in 19 years.
Once again, “Hot Sheet” shows us something that we traditionally do on the stove top, in this case chicken cutlets, can also be done in the oven.
I mean, I knew that already, because I’ve done it before. But the genius addition to this recipe is the use of Boursin cheese as the adhesive for the bread crumbs. Now that was a delicious addition.
The other twist was that you put the breadcrumbs on only one side. Yes, you read that right. Although it looks like a traditional fully-fried, fully-coated chicken cutlet, looks can be deceiving. All the crumb goodness can be found on only one side.
I’d hazard a guess that both the oven cooking and 50 percent reduction in breadcrumbs is making this version of the dish much healthier. The cucumber salad was also delicious, if you love cucumber (as I do), though my husband was less convinced (he is not a fan of cucumber).
Yes, it’s another salad, and I make no apologies for that. We’re FINALLY enjoying some semblance of a summer here in London, so I’m going to make the most of it.
If you think the picture makes the dish look delicious, it’s because it was. Having graduated from the Gordon Ramsay School of Kitchen Efficiency, this came together pretty quickly even though it did require a fair amount of chopping.
One of the things I learned from this recipe is how easy it is to make pita chips. (I know the ones in the picture look pretty professional, but let me assure you they are the product of my fair hand.) All you have to do is cut up pitas into triangles, toss them in olive oil and then bake them. Who knew? This is a brilliant hack that I will use elsewhere.
One odd thing you do, though, is rather than marinade the chicken before you cook it, you marinade it after. It worked, and I suppose it kept things juicy, but it still struck me as strange. I’m not sure why you couldn’t marinade it a bit, and then finish it off with rest of the marinade? Something to think about next time.
All in all, another delicious salad for another sunny (thank goodness) summer night.
Whenever I’m tasked with spatchcocking a chicken, and I do it successfully, I feel as though I should get some sort of medal. To be sure, I can ask my friendly butchers at Dring’s to do it for me, but once I learned how easy it is to do (and this Waitrose cooking video via YouTube will show you how to do it I’m more than happy to get out my heavy kitchen scissors and go to town.
But beyond being able to show off (a bit) my scissor skills, who doesn’t love a roast chicken? I’ll tell you– no one. This was a sublime Sunday lunch on a recent rainy day– we’ve had a lot of those this summer in the U.K.– and we devoured the lot.
The one genius hack they do here is after you’ve made the herby rice and the chicken has been roasted, just before you put dinner on the table you add the chicken’s roasting juices to the rice. As they say in the instructions, “(hello!)”– and I’m here to tell you it’s a fantastic way to finish it all off.
One small note: we were supposed to add sultanas to the rice but I could NOT abide that, so I skipped that. But if sultanas as your thing, you go right ahead.
I have written many times about our family’s abiding love for chicken parmesan. We eat it on high holidays. We eat it on low holidays. We eat it when people come home. We eat it when we have friends over. We eat it when we have something to celebrate. We eat it when we’re sad. We eat it when there’s no occasion whatsoever, but we want something delicious. Saying it is a Firm Family Favourite doesn’t do it justice. I’ve even posted my recipe for it.
This is not a million miles away from that dish, except for one critical difference: you do not bread and fry the chicken. Sure, this is much healthier because briefly fry the chicken and then poach it in the tomato sauce, but let’s be honest: Frying makes everything better.
Don’t get me wrong; we loved this and it was very easy, making it a good weeknight meal. I also added black olives rather than capers to it (the store was out of capers), which gave it pasta puttanesca vibes, which is always delicious.
Would I make it again? Probably, but only if I didn’t have a whole lot of time for my usual chicken parmesan. It’s a classic for a reason.
One of the great things about this cookbook is that for nearly every recipe, Ali Slagle offers alternatives. It’s really handy if you like the looks of the basic recipe but can’t find one of the ingredients or maybe want to tweak it a bit but don’t know where to start.
This is the dinner I came up with after looking at the recipe for “Green Rice with Singed Feta.” I was all in for the green rice, but the problem was finding radishes that still had their leaves attached. Our greengrocer didn’t have them that day and I knew that our local supermarkets only carry radishes without their leaves.
The variation below said we could make the green rice using only spinach– check– and then we could finish it off not with singed feta but regular feta– check again. This was called Spanakorizo– close enough to the spanakopita we know and love that we wanted to give it a try. We love a bit of spinach and feta. But we also had a hankering for some chicken that night as well, so I then followed the recipe for chicken and rice just below the spanakorizo variation.
It was a total triumph. The green rice, studded with spinach and green onions, delivered a fork full of goodness. The chicken thighs on top were just what we were looking for. I can definitely see myself making this again and again.
Chicken Caesar salad is a firm favourite in this house. During Lockdown, even the kids came around to the wonder that is an excellent Caesar salad. For years they had resisted because of the preponderance of green stuff on the plate, but once they started eating the fried croutons, copious amounts of cheese and chicken, they were convinced.
Now that they’re both at university, we don’t even have to sell what we make for dinner. We simply make what we like and get on with it– like this salad. Bliss.
This is a great recipe. The dressing– a key component– is easily made and very tasty. What sets this recipe apart from any other version I’ve made is that you take some of the dressing, smother the chicken in it, and then cook it. This meant that not only did the chicken have a nice crust, it also was infused with the taste of anchovies and garlic from the dressing. It’s a genius idea.
This probably will become my new go-to chicken Caesar salad recipe. What an excellent start to the book.
A cookbook a month 