Chicken Piccata Recipe - Lemon Chicken Recipe

I seem to really enjoy lemon this time of year.   This Italian chicken recipe, My Chicken Piccata Recipe, tastes very gourmet, yet is very easy to make.  I also have previously posted a recipe for Chicken Francese, another recipe that has lemon.   This Chicken Piccata Recipe is a little easier to make, but also very delicious.  That makes both of these Lemon Chicken recipes among my very most favorite Italian chicken recipes.

Chicken Piccata - Doesn't This Look Great!

Ingredients

• 1 lb Thin Sliced Chicken Cutlets
• Sea Salt
• 1 Cup Flour
• 1/2 Stick of butter
• 1/2 Cup premium quality extra-virgin olive oil, I use Colivita
• 4 Lemons
• 1 cup Chicken Broth
• 1/4 cup rinsed and drained Capers
• 1 Can of Artichoke Hearts, rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Directions

Squeeze 3 of the lemons and set the juice aside.   Take the 4th lemon and cut into thin slices for garnish.
          
Reserve 2 Tbl of flour and set aside.

Put the remaining flour on a plate. Grind some fresh Sea Salt on the Flour and mix. 

Dredge the chicken cutlets in flour.

In a large skillet, melt some butter and add some olive oil. 

Fry the chicken in the butter and olive oil mixture, cooking both sides until browned. Cook all of your chicken this way.

Remove the chicken from the skillet and set aside. Do NOT clean the pan
.
Add the flour to the chicken broth and mix it well, while the broth is cold.

Add the chicken broth (with the flour), lemon juice and capers to the skillet. Bring this gravy to gentle boil. Make sure you incorporate what was left in the skillet by scraping with your spatchula or spoon, for added flavor. Simmer for 5 minutes. 

Add the chicken and the artichoke hearts to the gravy in the pan and simmer for an additional 5 to 10 minutes minutes. 

Plate the chicken piccata and ladle some of the gravy with capers and artichoke hearts over the chicken piccata. 

Garnish the Chicken Piccata with the lemon slices and parsley.   Serve with a side of pene.

I hope you enjoy this awesome and easy to make Italian chicken recipe. Chicken Piccata just tastes amazing, and it very easy to make.   On a cold winter day, perhaps if you don't feel well, Chicken Piccata seems to make you feel better, like Grandma's Chicken Soup.   An easy variation for this Chicken Piccata Recipe is to omit the capers, since not everyone likes them.

Holiday Shopping for the New Wine Maker

Do you have a special person who would love to learn how to make wine at home?  Do they stare at their Wine Spectator magazine with visions of Chianti dancing in their head? With the holiday season quickly approaching, I thought it may be helpful for folks, who are interested in giving the gift of home wine making but don’t know where to start, some guidance.

First, while so many people would love to receive a gift like the ability to learn how to make homemade wine, it pays to do a little homework! You wouldn’t want to give the ability to make Alcohol to a person with dependency challenges.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Wine Kits

Wine making doesn’t have to be hard. While many are intimidated by the idea of stomping on grapes or growing / picking / buying fresh fruit, these days, there are other options that are much easier for the beginner. Wine Kits are a great option for someone just starting out, and many make excellent wines.   

Most of the things I will recommend here are available from your local Home brew shop. But, many don’t have a local home brew shop, so I am putting in links here where everything comes from Amazon.com. Amazon has a great selection, and often time has free shipping, which is a huge plus. If you are getting these things as gifts, you can even have Amazon ship the gift directly to the person you are giving it to, saving you time, money and lines at the post office…

There are lots and lots of options, so I would suggest doing a little snooping to find out a few things like:

     Does the person like Reds or Whites?

        What kinds? Do they like a Cab or Pinot Noir? Chardonnay or Riesling?

    Do they like Dry, Slightly off Dry, or Sweet Wines?

 After you do a little research, you next need to know this very important fact:

Wine Kits are like Cake Mixes! A Wine Kit is a Wine Ingredient Kit! Wine Kits don’t come with the equipment to make the wine (most of the time). Let us compare this to a box of Brownie Mix. The Brownie Mix doesn’t come with pans, mixers, spoons, bowls or the oven, right?

Most Wine Kits come with:

•     A Bag of Grape Juice Concentrate
•     Yeast
•     Packet of K-Meta ( to stop fermentation )
•     Packet of Bentonite
•     Packets for clearing (Most use Chitosan, a shell fish derivative )

And some come these things in addition:

•     Oak Chips – Oak Sawdust or both
•     Sorbate ( Used to prevent fermentation if back-sweetening wine )
•     Corks and Caps ( Only included in PakLab Kits, such as Vino Italiano )

That is it! You will most likely need to add water (unless you are doing a port). There is no equipment included here, except for the one thing I will recommend that comes with everything. More on that later….

Now you will need to add the wine making equipment to the equation. You don’t need a lot of equipment to make wine, but a few things are essential. The equipment is a buy once and use over and over investment.

For equipment, this is a basic starter kit:

　

But, I would recommend adding these things:

 

If you want a better equipment kit, I would recommend this:

 
 

Now that you have wine making equipment out of the way, you can look at the wine kits. Based off of your research, I would recommend getting the person the type of wine they like. If they like big red wines, get them a Cabernet Sauvignon, or Merlot. If Pinot Noir is their thing, go for it…. If they like white wines, go with their preference.

For starters, I would recommend these wine kits:

Lower Priced:

Medium Priced:

Premium Priced: 

This is something entirely new. Amazon now has a wine kit AND equipment kit all in one package! The kit comes with the basic equipment you need AND two wine kits!
 

 
This comes with a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay wine kit, each producing about 25 bottles of wine. For the price, it is very attractive. This it includes a food grade Plastic carboy, similar to the Better Bottle style carboy. While many folks prefer this style carboy, I still prefer the glass carboys. Sure Glass can break and is heavy, but I am old school that way. If you want Glass, then I would pass on this. Otherwise, it is an awesome deal.

What is nice about it is that it comes with everything but the bottles… It makes for a more complete gift. I would still order extra cleanser, K-Meta and Oak. And if you are following along with my videos, I would make these to 5 gallons each, instead of 6. Just like the Vino Italiano.

So, I hope this article was helpful for you to put a smile on a new winemaker’s face, when they find these things under the tree this year.

Struffoli Recipe - Italian Honey Balls

Struffoli Recipe
Italian Masterpiece

Making Italian dessert recipes are some of the things that build memories, especially if you involve your children in the process. Struffoli is one of those things that is very popular among Italian families around the Christmas holiday season. In fact, while I was growing up, I don’t remember a Christmas without it.  This Struffoli Recipe is easy to make, tasty and colorful. 



Italian Honey Balls, called Struffoli

Once you make this Struffoli Recipe, the Struffoli will keep covered at room temperature for several days. Therefore it is an easy to make this Struffoli recipe the day before company comes over for family get togethers..

Honey also has numerous healthful qualities, so you need not feel guilty about this recipe. I prefer to use Grapeseed Oil. I like the way it works with this, but if I can’t get it, I use Safflower oil. I tend to try to steer away from Canola and Corn Oils… Not because they taste bad, but because I opt for a healthier alternative.

Let's get started with this Italian dessert, my Struffoli Recipe!

Ingredients For The Struffoli Recipe

• 1 ½ cups of flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 ½ cups honey
• Candied fruit and citrus peel
• Multi-colored Nonpareils
• Sliced Almonds
• You will also need vegetable oil for Deep Frying

Directions For The Struffoli Recipe

• Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
• I use a Kitchen Aid Mixer for this with a dough hook. Beat the eggs with your mixer and add the flour/salt mixture while pulsing the mixer. Then, mix until a well blended dough forms.
• Mix (knead) in you mixer a few minutes, until the dough is smooth. If the dough is sticky, add a little more flour.
• Shape the dough into a ball and place it back into your mixing bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for about a half hour.
• Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Roll one piece into a ½ inch diameter rope, using your hands.
• Cut the rope into ½ inch sections
• Heat up your oil in a fryer, (use a fry baby if you have one). Once heated up, fry up enough at a time as not to over crowd them while frying. It should take about 2 minutes to fry to a golden brown.
• After all of the Struffoli are fried, set them aside and heat up the honey in a sauce pan until it starts to simmer.
• Remove the honey from the heat and add the Struffoli to the pan and gently stir well to coat all of the Struffoli with the hot honey.
• On your serving plate, pile up the Struffoli into a Struffoli mountain and decorate it with the nonpareils sliced almonds and candied fruit.

I hope you enjoyed making my Struffoli Recipe. This is a classic Italian dessert recipe that is loved by all ages. Check back for more authentic Italian recipes.  Happy Holidays!

Winexpert Chocolate Raspberry Port Wine Kit - A Yummy Experience

Winexpert Chocolate Raspberry Port Kit A Very Cool and Delicious Wine kit. 

UPDATE: Please check my new wine making website for more detail on wine making.   How To Make Homemade Wine

Winexpert is the leading manufacturer of Wine kits for folks, like me, who love to make their own wine. I made this kit last year, and was blown away by it's all around excellence. It was so good, I decided to make two this year...



This kit makes 30 of the small size port bottles, the 375ml.  The 750ml bottle is the standard size, so if you wanted to bottle in the standard bottles, you will only get 15 out of this kit.

Since this kit makes 3 gallons, I decided to make two of them, so that I can easily work with a 6 gallon carboy.   If  you don't have a 3 gallon carboy and want to make this kit, you may want to get a 3 gallon carboy if you plan on making only one.

So, follow along with me while I make it. Here is the video I made of the first part, called Primary Fermentation...



In the next step in making this wine kit, sugar is added to bump up the ABV.

After that, we are up what wine makers call Secondary Fermentation.