Chicken Romano

One of the most popular dishes on most Italian menus is Chicken Romano. This is really quite a simple dish to make, but also very flavorful. Chicken Romano is lightly battered breasts, finished with lemon, wine, and mushrooms.

You start by trimming and filleting some chicken breasts. If you want them to be very tender, it’s also good to pound the chicken with a mallet (put a piece of doubled plastic wrap over the chicken when pounding.

The batter for Chicken Romano consists of eggs, Romano cheese, parsley, and a dash of salt, pepper, and garlic power. You’ll also want to chop up some mushrooms, or just clean them.

To prepare the dish, put some flour in a bowl and heat a skillet with a generous amount of olive oil. Coat each chicken breast in flour, and then batter, and place in the warm oil. Brown both sides.

Next, add some butter, mushrooms, white wine, lemon juice, and cover. If you keep a nice seal, cooking it longer will only make the dish more tender, to an extent. However, after they have been properly browned, they would be ready to eat after minutes of cooking in the wine. They are very thin after having been filleted.

If you are cooking for many people and can’t fit all the chicken in a skillet, you can brown all the pieces, and then finish them off in the oven with the wine, etc.

While I won’t give a precise recipe, since that’s the fun of cooking, if you are cooking for a family of five you’ll need:

* Five chicken breasts to be filleted
* Half a dozen eggs
* A quarter pound of Romano cheese
* White wine (use cheap stuff)
* Mushrooms
* Some olive oil, salt, pepper, flour, garlic powder, lemon, and parsley.

You might serve this with a nice salad and a side of zucchini or fresh green beans. You could also serve bread or pasta. You can find this dish at Abruzzi's.

A Final Note: Lemon Wine
While I just suggest lemon and wine above, you can also make lemon wine. Lemon wine is reduction of chicken fat, lemon, water, and wine, easily stored in the freezer. I will go into the details on lemon wine next time.