Lemony Chicken with Extra Lemon

PROGRAM NOTE: This will be the 601st post on Nueva Receta, which has had 123,083 views as of this writing.  Thanks to everyone for joining us in the ongoing adventure of cooking at home! And if you have not already done so, please read the origin story of this blog, in honor of the late Dr. Bob Phillips.

I picked up some extra chicken during the weekly grocery run. Even though Pam was making chilaquiles on Tuesday, I decided that it would give me a good possibility for a nueva receta later in the week. I checked only one book -- Dishing Up Maryland -- but I did not find anything I had not already tried that would not require returning to the grocery store. (We're still on Covid-19 precautions, so I really try to limit grocery shopping to once per week.)

Being too lazy to return to the cookbook cupboard, I turned to the New York Times, where I found Lemon Chicken by Paul Mones. The byline mentions that it is adapted from a recipe by Nicole Mones, suggesting that this is another couple that cooks and writes together.

Speaking of cooking together, Pamela noticed that yesterday was National Men Make Dinner Day, one of those concepts that sounds egalitarian and sexist and heteronormative all at the same time. The web supports our misgivings by using a Mad Men-era icon of a man sipping coffee as part of the page banner. We decided to play along anyway; I even put on an apron for photographic evidence that I know how to use a kitchen.

I followed the recipe mostly as written, but using our indispensable cast-iron skillet since we gave away our wok between grad-school moves decades ago. 

One departure from the recipe is that I used regular wheat flour instead of potato flour for two reasons: first, to avoid returning to the grocery store and second, because the reader comments below the recipe exhibited a lot of disagreement about how the flour was to be used, or whether its use is intended at all -- with something called potato starch offered as an alternative by one reader.

I am not sure how potato flour would have been different, but the egg-flour mix was essentially paste, even after I added about a half cup of milk to it. This was very different from any egg bath I have used before, but I do think that it worked well. Readers of the recipe will note that the chicken itself calls for no lemon -- it appears only in the sauce, which is essentially a lemonade reduced with cornstarch. 

As a lover of all things lemon, I decided the recipe could use an enhancement: lemon-infused olive oil that we recently received from our friends at L.O.V.E. in Frederick, Maryland. I also used the oil in preparing brown rice as a side.

The result was delicious comfort food during an angst-ridden election week in which comfort was sorely needed.

This is a photo of what mine did not look like:

Photo: Dwight Eschliman NYT with Food Stylist Kevin Crafts