The Silver Palate: Lemon Chicken

The Silver Palate organizes recipes within events. Lemon chicken was featured under the Mother's Day section and it was recommended that the chicken be served over lemon rice. I served it with some garlicky sauteed kale and Israeli cous cous to contrast the intense lemon flavor in the chicken. The chicken is marinated over night in pure lemon juice and topped with a lemon sauce. As I mentioned in the last post, these chicken breasts were originally destined to be a chinese lemon chicken. So I was very pleased with the intense lemon flavor chicken that reminded me of the pseuodo-chinese lemon chicken. All that was needed to turn this recipe asian was some rice vinegar and sesame oil.

Lemon Chicken

2 whole chicken breasts, each cut in half
2 1/2 cups of fresh lemon juice ( this requires about 10 lemons, but I used lemon juice from concentrate)
1 cup of unbleached all purpose flour
1 tablespoon paprika
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
2 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 lemon, washed and thinly sliced

1. One day before cooking the chicken, place the pieces in a bowl. Pour the lemon juice over the chicken, cover the dish and refrigerate over night.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
3. Remove the chicken from the juice and reserve the juice. Combine the flour, salt, and paprika on a plate and dredge the chicken with the seasoned flour. Place the chicken in a shallow baking pan.
4. Bake the chicken 40 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, whisk the remaining lemon juice with the stock, and brown sugar.
6. Pour the lemon juice mixture over the chicken. Bake 20-25 minutes, basting the chicken occasionally.

Serve this chicken over some type of grain to catch the lemon sauce.