Day 48: Chicken paillard with creamy cucumber and courgettes

Another guinea pig – yay! This time it was my Dear Friend who I mentioned before - the one who packed up my beloved kitchen and wrote the funny messages on the boxes the time we moved house. Now, Dear Friend would literally eat chicken until the cows come home but Dear Friend has just gotten to the magical Week-12 of pregnancy and, as many women know, that does all sorts of things to one’s appetite. You begin to hate foods you normally love and begin to love the ones you normally hate. Sure I told you before about me and the bags of parsley! I’m telling you, anything goes when it comes to appetite and pregnancy. Anyway, I thought I’d be ok if I made Dear Friend a chicken dinner and never worried until she was there eating it, enjoying it and telling me that it was the first piece of chicken she’d had in 8 weeks. However, all was good in the hood and she said that she was thoroughly enjoying it! Phew…

So, what I made tonight was Chicken paillard with creamy cucumber and courgettes. To start off, I took the breasts of chicken and slit them length-ways and then pulled them apart slightly before seasoning them on each side. I added butter to the frying pan and fried the chicken in it for a few minutes on each side on a high heat. Having started last night’s recipe by burning the ingredients, I didn’t have the pan as warm tonight so although the recipe said to only fry for 2 minutes on each side, I actually ended up frying them for 5 minutes on each side. The last thing I wanted was to give food poisoning to a pregnant woman!

Once the chicken was fried, I put it on a warm plate, covered it with tin foil and put it in a warm oven. Then I got on with the rest of the recipe which involved me sautéing grated courgettes and cucumber in a wee bit more butter in the frying pan. After a minute, I added in cream, brought it up to a simmer for 2 minutes before adding freshly chopped basil leaves. I served up the chicken and sauce with green beans.

The verdict…

Dear Friend said, and I quote, “It’s like something you’d get in a restaurant” and gave it 10 marks out of 10. Yay!!! She said it was so tasty and although she hadn’t eaten chicken in 8 weeks, she really liked it. Result. Dear Husband gave it 8.5 marks out of 10 and said it was the nicest dish I’d made in a week!!! Cue Dear Friend who promptly told him that I had him spoiled (which I do!) and he should be so glad that I’m doing the Challenge – which he is. I asked Dear Son was it ok, nice or very nice and he said “very nice!” which is a better way of gauging his opinion. Although, he still says “2 out of 10, Mum!”.

I liked this recipe as it was a totally different way of cooking something which I cook a lot of i.e. chicken. It was one of the few times that I cooked with courgettes which I was a wee bit iffy about; however, a Dear Friend and colleague told me today at work that she loves courgettes and cooks with them all the time so that kind of changed my mind about them. The recipe was definitely easy and, if you make this recipe, I would recommend that you grate the courgettes and cucumber into a large bowl as that will make it easier to tip them into the frying pan. When I cut each breast of chicken, I should have made the cut deeper so that they could have been flattened more and, therefore, would have reduced the cooking time but sure I’ll know for next time.

If you like chicken, make this recipe. You’ll see chicken from a different perspective and you'll include two really good but different vegetables such as courgettes and cucumbers in a dinner so again, you're increasing your veg intake without much effort and that’s something we all should do.

So there you go. Great to have had a dinner guest around who has a scoring system which is definitely more in my favour. In fact, she is coming round for dinner again next Monday so I know she definitely liked this evening's effort because, believe me, the same doll would tell me if she didn’t and that’s the great thing about friends like that…