A Perfect Winter Mashup of Chicken Piccata and Potpie
Finally, two of the world’s greatest dishes have become one
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On a weekday morning last month before the world turned upside down, I asked my wife to devote her commute to thinking about what she wanted for dinner. At 8:07 a.m., I got this text:
OK dinner theme is chicken, three options: rotisserie from Mexican resto, your chicken potpie, or Pelicana.
The “Mexican resto” is 20 seconds from our apartment and their rotisserie chicken is legit. Chicken potpie is something we have once a year when it’s freezing outside. Pelicana is a delicious Korean fried chicken restaurant, whose location near-ish to us seems to have closed.
At 8:10 a.m., this text:
Thought of a fourth. The chicken lemon caper sauce salad that you also make. A “healthy” option.
Chicken piccata (which my wife calls “chicken with lemon-caper sauce”) is her all-time favorite dish. I have no recollection of ever turning it into a salad. Sometimes I make it into pasta, which, if that’s what she means by “salad,” is further proof that we are very compatible.
I narrow it down to piccata or potpie and ask if she has a preference. She says no. If she’s not going to choose, I’m not either. And that’s how chicken piccata potpie was born.
If we’re being honest, I also brought the hunk of Parmesan and a grater to the table (who are we kidding; it was the couch) and grated even more into the filling each time I broke new ground on the crust.
It’s basically “normal” chicken potpie with the piccata essentials (garlic, lemon, capers, and parsley) stirred into the filling mixture. For some reason, I decided that it was of the utmost importance to cook the chicken as if you’re making real piccata (aka cutlets dredged in flour and sautéed in butter and olive oil) before chopping it up and mixing it in with everything else. That’s not entirely necessary (you could just start by sautéing the vegetables, then fold in boneless chunks of roasted or poached chicken along with the peas), but it does improve the flavor, and…
