I needed a fast dinner for Halloween night just before all of the festivities began, and I found the solution with this next post.
I have made chicken and veal piccata probably hundreds of times in my professional career, and in western Massachusetts, as far as most restaurants go, those meals are pretty much identically the same. You pan sear your chicken or veal medallions, add some garlic and capers, deglaze with some white wine, reduce until the pan is almost dry and add a copious amount of butter to thicken the sauce.
According to Mario, this is contrary to the lessons that he learned while he was in Italy. 'What I observed was a looser, less reduced sauce on the plate that was closer to a pan juice, maybe broken with some rivulets of olive oil at the last minute and certainly not thickened with a roux or any other liaison.' So I was intrigued and excited to try Mario's version of this classic Italian dish.
The ingredient list is relatively short, as is the total cooking time. The recipe does require a little bit of keen grocery shopping though.
We will need caper berries, not capers, which I had to source out on Amazon.com. Turmeric, which I've never seen put in a piccata sauce before, but that is available in almost every run of the mill grocery store. Lastly, we need monkfish, which of course was available at Whole Foods. If you follow along with me at home and can't find monkfish, or are scared to try it, then any other white fish will do. Bear in mind that Mario correctly states in the recipe notes that monkfish is a great way to introduce fish to those that may otherwise prefer chicken. This recipe will also give me an opportunity to use up those preserved lemons from a previous post that I have sitting on my counter.
The best way to approach this recipe is to make sure that our ingredients are prepped ahead of time so that once we start cooking everything will flow nicely. First I cut a lemon into pitiless segments.
Next, is to shred a bunch of parsley.
Then, I take two of the preserved lemon quarters and slice them paper thin.
Last up for the prep is the monkfish. It needs to be cut into medallions.
Now its time to start cooking. The monkfish gets seasoned with salt and pepper, and dredged in seasoned flour, the excess flour being shook off. The monkfish medallions then go in a sauté pan with extra virgin olive oil that's smoking hot.
The monkfish get turned after about four minutes and golden brown.
Once the other side of the medallions are cooked, they get placed on a plate lined with paper towels to drain the excess oil.
Now it's time to start building the pan sauce. To the sauté pan we add wine, tumeric, lemon juice, and caper berries, swirling over high heat for several minutes as the sauce reduces. Two things struck me as odd here: The adding of a pinch of tumeric, and not adding any garlic to the sauce. I have never built my piccata sauce in this manner before, but intrigued I continue.
At this point the sauce has reduced down as much as I wish to take it, so I turn off the heat and season with salt and pepper, and add the lemon segments, preserved lemon slices, and parsley to the pan. The monkfish also goes back in the pan and it all gets swirled with a little bit more of extra-virgin olive oil off the heat, creating what we in the kitchen would call a 'broken sauce'. Again, this is different because there is no addition of butter, roux, or buerre-manie that I would normally use to thicken a sauce.
I'm now ready to plate the monkfish.
Flavor wise, there was a lot going on here. The brine from the caper berries came through, the lemon flavor was intense, and the tumeric gave the pan sauce a beautiful golden sheen. Overall, this was a really progressive take on a classic. If you hate lemon, then this isn't the dish for you. But eating this makes me feel like I am on the Italian coast overlooking the beautiful sea. I am totally stealing this recipe!
There's so much left to do before the end of the year so keep reading. Until next time...
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