Chicken, Sesame!

 

Theirs, not mine: photo by Andrew Crivani, NYT

Since it was first offered in our dairy box a few months ago, we have made free-range chicken breasts from Common Wealth Poultry a routine part of our weekly order, whether we have a specific recipe in mind or not. 

I was prepared to make "chicken something or other" -- probably barbeque -- when Pam found something more interesting in New York Times Cooking: Pierre Franey's Sesame-Coated Sautéed Chicken Breasts.

This is one of those recipes that is so simple that the title provides most of the instructions. One step not included in the title is to "gently" pound the breasts between layers of waxed paper. I used a heavy spoon instead of a mallet to partly flatten them, and then dredged the breasts in sesame seeds. I then transferred them to our indispensable cast-iron skillet, in which I had melted a substantial amount of butter over medium-high heat. The recipe calls for five minutes per side, but did not call for sufficient pounding -- had I gotten the meat to a 1/4-inch thickness, the timing would have been correct. I lowered the heat and continued until heated through.

Meanwhile, I cooked thin spaghetti and tossed it with parmesan cheese. When I removed the chicken from the pan, I whisked in some lemon juice and poured it over both the chicken and the spaghetti. This was a delicious, buttery dinner that paired well with chardonnay. This is not a choice we would not normally make on a cool, cloudy day, but it was perfect!

After a pause (that is, watching Mary Tyler Moore on Hulu), we had a perfect dessert: mint chocolate-chip ice cream in our house of the same color, with Kahlua in honor of National Kahlua Day and in memory of our many previous travels to Mexico.