"What I really eat" are my Iron Chef meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

Realistically I’ll realize about an hour before we should eat dinner that I’ve never taken the pack of chicken out of the freezer that I wanted to use. It’s then a mad dash to thaw chicken totally improperly so I can start cooking with it. At some point I acknowledge that whatever grand semi-plans I had for dinner need to be completely abandoned because I’ve wasted an hour of valuable time waiting for the chicken to not be a solid block of ice.

So we wait a little bit longer for the chicken to thaw. I don’t know if you know this, but like the watched pot never boils, the chicken never thaws. Then we slice each breast in half (it still being a little icy actually makes this easier.) Pound it thin with a meat mallet. Even though they’re still stupid cold, they’ll be so thin they will fry up quickly after a dredging of starch and egg. Deglaze the pan with chicken broth and lemon juice, reduce it to thicken and make it silky with butter. Pour over chicken. Shower with parsley. Done.

This is all practically 15 minutes after slicing the first breast open.

The takeaway: defrost your chicken in time for dinner. Or like me: ditch the original plan and make a dinner that only takes 20 minutes.

Quick Chicken Francese

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken cutlets, pounded thin

2 tablespoons tapioca starch or corn starch (can sub 1/4 cup flour to dredge instead, if desired)

1 egg

olive oil for sauteing

1 cup chicken broth

1 lemon, halved -- juice one half and thinly slice the other

1 tablespoon of butter

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

Directions:

Salt and pepper the cutlets. Dredge each in the tapioca starch and put aside on a plate. Beat the egg in a medium sized bowl.

Coat the bottom of a large saute pan with olive oil over medium heat. Once starting to smoke dredge the tapioca starched cutlets in the egg wash and place in the pan to brown. Let chicken cook on one side until golden brown. Flip and cook second side until browned and cooked through. Saute chicken in batches if needed. Set chicken aside.

Deglaze the pan with the chicken broth scraping up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the juice of half the lemon. Let this reduce down by half, about 5 minutes. In little pieces melt in the tablespoon of butter. Add the lemon slices to the sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Put chicken on a serving plate and then pour the pan sauce over. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Serves 4