Florentine chicken fillets

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 14

Florentine chicken fillets

Alison Holst’s

NMcrowxe 1 Cooking

In 1982 I spent a few days in Florence with my sister, Patricia, who was singing in the opera house there, as she had on several previous occasions.

My lasting memories of this trip to Florence are not of the museums but the markets she took me to visit. At nearly 40deg. C the heat was so great that I could not go far after 11 a.m., but the market street stalls and food shops opened early, and I could wander around them, fascinated, in the cool of the early morning. We stood spellbound in front of one stall where chickens were debreasted. It took only a few seconds for the two meaty breast fillets to be piled on one side, ready for affluent purchasers while somewhat flattened carcases piled up on the other side, to be sold more cheaply to the less discerning. It isn’t difficult to cut the two meaty fillets from a chicken. Use the rest of the chicken for a longer cooking recipe. If you want to cook four boneless, skinless fillets and you have only one chicken, skin, bone and open flat the two thigh portions and give them the same treatment that you give the chicken breasts.

Remove the two breast pieces from a chicken. Remove the skin. Pound the fillets flat between two sheets of plastic, using a rolling pin. Take care not to pulverise the meat, which is very tender. If you are careful you can pound the meat until have have two thin even pieces twice as big as the pieces you started with.

Mix two tablespoons of fine dry breadcrumbs with two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese and about % teaspoon of very finely chopped fresh thyme, marjoram or sage, or a larger quantity of parsley. Lift the plastic off the top of the chicken and sprinkle half this mixture over the meat. Pat it in thoroughly, until the surface of the meat feels quite dry, then turn the chicken over so

that the coated side is facing down. Peel away the other sheet of plastic and coat this side of the chicken with the remaining coating. If you find, during this process, that the coating is not sticking moisten the surface of the meat with milk, then coat with more crumbs.

Keep the coated chicken between sheets of plastic in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook it. It will keep well up to 36 hours, if you like to work ahead. Heat one tablespoon of oil and one tablespoon of butter in a frying pan until it is straw coloured. Add the meat and cook one to two minutes per side, until the coating is golden brown. Do not overcook. Serve immediately with spinach, grilled or pan-grilled tomato halves, and new potatoes.