It’s been a while since I tried a completely new-to-me Martha dish. In fact, I had never heard of paillards. There’s a section in January Living all about paillards, which are essentially thin cuts of meat. To make chicken paillard, I butterflied chicken breasts, then pounded them flat. This was easy to do. The recipe itself was also simple – cook the chicken in butter and olive oil. Remove it from the pan and cook 1/4 minced shallot then add two lemons that have the rind removed and have been cut into segments. 3/4 cup of chicken stock also gets added. You cook it down and toss in a little butter at the end. It sounded simple and delicious.

It was simple, but it was not delicious. I liked the chicken cooked this way very much. It was tender and thin. The sauce, however, was horrendous. It was so incredibly sour that we couldn’t eat it. I don’t understand how anyone could think adding two entire lemons to this pan sauce could be a good idea. The photo in the magazine is deceiving – it shows a small amount of light brown pan sauce. Mine turned out lighter  with big hunks of lemon in it – it looked like applesauce and as you can see, there was a lot of it. It was not appetizing at all.

I will definitely prepare chicken in this style again, but I’ll make  a completely different sauce.

It’s been a while since I tried a completely new-to-me Martha dish. In fact, I had never heard of paillards. There’s a section in January Living all about paillards, which are essentially thin cuts of meat. To make chicken paillard, I butterflied chicken breasts, then pounded them flat. This was easy to do. The recipe … Read more →