| It's pretty much what I assumed you would be doing when I posted on the other thread. This is a very easy thing to do and we do something similar several times a week. You are just going to pan fry some meat and deglaze the pan. You can vary it - for example use veal or pork instead of chicken or turkey, or any red meat, like lamb or beef or venison, in which case you can use a bigger wine and leave out the lemon. You can deglaze the pan with Marsala, which is a type of sweet wine (in which case I might not use the capers), with a decent balsamic vinegar, or with lemon juice and chicken stock if you don't have wine, or with tomatoes from the garden or tomato sauce. If red meat, use red wine and no lemon, or use cider and sliced apples for the fall, or plums w the wine. Any of these can will be quite good. If you don't have capers, you can use some olives, but please don't use those things that come in cans or jars in grocery stores! Now as for wine, that dish is a common dish, made with minor variations in much of the Mediterranean. So you can, but need not, use an Italian white. You will have lemon juice in here, and the wine will not add too much, but you want an acidic wine. Something that has gone thru malolactic fermentation and that has been in oak barrels will not really be appropriate. Select a sauvignon blanc which will have decent acidity, and use that. Alternatively a pinot grigio, an arneis, a pinot blanc, a chenin blanc, or something similar. I use any of those that I happen to have at hand. But heat beyond just getting things warm once you add the wine. You want to evaporate a bit of the liquid to concentrate the flavors. They didn't give you good enough directions. When you remove the chicken, turn the heat up high and add the wine and whatever other liquid you have, while scraping up the browned bits on the bottom. THis is called deglazing the pan. When the liquid is reduced by about half, then remove from heat and add the butter. The purpose of the butter is to be an emulsifier. Stir it into the liquid and watch it thicken. In addition, do NOT make this in an aluminum pan. The acid will leach out some of the color and your food will be gray. Use an enamel or stainless steel pan for this. I don't know where you live, but almost any decent inexpensive dry white will be OK. Go to any wine store and tell them that you need a crisp, dry white. An unoaked chardonnay may work too but I would argue against a chardonnay since you don't know wine enough to know which is which. The suggestions they gave you above will work. The wine can be almost from anywhere - Argentina, Australia, France, the US, Italy, etc. And finally, don't stress too much about it. The wine is the least important item here. The key is NOT to overcook the chicken breasts - nothing is worse than dry chicken IMO. If you don't get any wine, just add a little more lemon juice and use water and then stir in a spoonful of some Dijon mustard at the end instead of butter. You cut a couple of calories out and have another nice dish. Bring to a boil in the pan and pour over the chicken. |
