Chicken Francaise

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Skinless, Boneless Chicken Breasts, sliced into thin cutlets
• 1 1/2 Cups of all-purpose Flour
• 3 Eggs, Beaten
• 1 tbsp of Dried Oregano each added to the flour and the egg
• Salt
• Olive oil for frying

For the Sauce

• 2 Large Cloves of Garlic, chopped, then salted, then minced to a fine diced paste with the edge of a knife
• 1-2 Cups of Dry White Wine
• 2-3 Cups of Homemade Chicken Broth, or Frozen Store-Bought Bone Broth
• 1/2 lemon, sliced into thin rounds, the other half reserve for the juice
• 1 1/2 tbsps of butter
• 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp of AP flour
• Salt and pepper
• Fresh Parsley, Finely Minced

DIRECTIONS

Prep The Sauce

1. Cut a couple cloves of garlic in half, smash them to remove the paper and break them down, then chop until they are the size of a small dice, then add some coarse salt, this is going to be an abrasive to further break down the garlic and with my knife laying flat on the board with he blade facing the garlic, using the blade start to almost chomp at the garlic and the salt not only helps break down the garlic, but this is just me controlling the flavor I want in my garlic, I find this preparation almost tames the pungency of it but I still get a lot of garlic flavor but its that good garlic flavor. Use your free hand as leverage and work the garlic until it feels like a paste but the garlic remains in a small dice. Then place in a bowl and set aside.
2. Next, roll up a small bundle of fresh Italian parsley, slice it as finely as you can in an initial once through and then chop it in every direction until it's processed into a fine mince. Get it into a bowl and set aside.
3. With half of the lemon, slice them into thin rounds and then remove the seeds in those rounds, then save the other half for its juice.
4. Making the Beurre Manie or Kneaded Butter.
5. Work the room temp butter into the flour until you can’t really tell there was ever flour in there, then I’ll place that back in the fridge until I’m ready to use it. This will thicken the sauce.

Slicing and Battering the Chicken

1. With a thin knife like a boning or filet knife, carefully shave a thin slice of chicken as thin as possible, making your way from the top of the chicken to the bottom. Season the chicken lightly with salt.
2. Get a container for flour, a bowl for the eggs. For this recipe we only need a two stage breading station, not a typical 3 stage station like we do for chicken cutlets.
3. First dredge the chicken in the flour until fully coated, shake off the excess then drop it into the eggs and coat it in the egg. Repeat with the rest of the chicken and we can just hold the cutlets in the egg until we’re ready to cook.

Cooking The Chicken and the Sauce

1. In a high rimmed saute pan, add enough olive oil to cover the pan. Preheat the pan on high heat and once hot, add the chicken, about 3 cutlets at a time. Cook it hard and fast on that one side and as it cooks, you can actually see the thin piece of chicken cooking in real time. Check around the edges for browning and once the chicken has browned and the chicken looks about 60% cooked, give the a flip and allow that otherwise to kiss the heat but you don’t want them fully cooked, you want them about 85-90% cooked, they will finish cooking them later. Remove them from the pan, cook up the rest of the chicken then transfer to the plate and set that off to the side.
2. Drain that oil to prepare the pan for the sauce, then add a small amount of oil and the garlic and cook on medium high heat until browned and fragrant. Then turn off the heat to deglaze that pan with some of that white wine, get the heat back and reduce the wine until you can start to see the bottom of the pan. Now add about 3 cups of the chicken broth. Again, bring that up to a simmer and allow that to reduce, but not all the way, maybe about half way just until the sauce starts to form a tiny bit of structure. I can just tell by how the sauce begins to move a bit slower when I swirl the pan. Once it's there, add the lemon slices, then juice the half lemon through a strainer to catch the seeds, season with salt and then toss in the kneaded butter into the pan and slowly melt it in. This French technique of kneading the flour into the butter allows the flour to slowly be incorporated into the space, thickening it without the formation of lumps. Once the butter is melted you will need to bring the sauce back up to a boil to activate the thickening power of the flour. At which point we can add the chicken back to the pan to finish cooking it through. This is going to ensure our chicken isn’t overcooked, despite how thin it is, but actually tender and juicy. And you’ll see the sauce thicken in front of your eyes.
3. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes in the sauce and then check for the consistency, it should hold the back of a spoon at the very least, you can go thicker if you’d like. Then give it a taste, it should be balanced. If the sauce is too lemony, add more butter. If the sauce thickens too much then, thin you can thicken it back out with a bit of stock. If you like it more zingy, more lemony, use less butter. And then finish with the fresh parsley.
4. Now to plate it, shingle the chicken around the center of the plate. Then place the lemon wedges on top so you can identify the dish visually. Then go to town with that sauce. And there you have a perfect classic chicken francaise.