If you like simple Italian dishes, you won’t find any simpler than Marcella Hazan’s quick chicken breasts with lemon, butter and parsley. Sizzle up these tender fillets in a flash, for both everyday and special meals. Hazan calls this chicken “Siena-style,” but its lemony sauce reminds us of the Amalfi Coast, where glorious fist-sized lemons grew within reach of our hiking trail.
From Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials” Cookbook
Nobody beats our favorite trailblazing Italian cookbook author Ada Boni for classic recipes. But Marcella Hazan took a crack at it. With help from Julia Child’s editor Judith Jones, she wrote two “Classic Italian” cookbooks in the 1970s and later merged them into Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, the source for this dish. These recipes may be classics, but Hazan’s Bolognese still looks more like tomato sauce than traditional meat ragu (see “Classic Ragù alla Bolognese from Ada Boni”).
Since we are Team Boni, we’ve never felt the need for Hazan’s cookbook. But, as fate would have it, it fell into our hands in what you might call a “settlement.”
The All-Clad Clash
Recipephany Test Kitchens recently converted to induction cooking, so I gave away our trusty Calphalon aluminum cookware and went all-stainless, turning to the gold standard of stainless steel cookware: All-Clad.
The All-Clad site lured me in with shiny cookware sets on sale. And they sent me personalized emails and texts with discount codes for exactly the cookware we wanted!
But then at check-out, a funny thing happened. Poof! The codes went up in smoke.
Figuring it was a glitch with the site, I bought the set and followed up with a call to customer service. Nope, they insisted, the discounts didn’t apply. To prove it, they sent a URL to a hidden, unlinked, unsearchable, dead-end page buried in their site. There, when I scrolled down, I found the set in the list of products not covered by promotions.
Well, they baited-and-switched the wrong sucker.
I bombarded them with screenshots showing how they misled me—and other trusting consumers. I can smell when something’s off, and this stunk. Would it kill them to include the three magic words: “some exclusions apply”?
While they denied any wrongdoing, someone at the company must have heard my rant. The next day I got a promotional text exactly the same as one I had already received—except it now included those magic words.
They continued to refuse to honor the discount, though. The best they would do was send a cookbook. Okay, I thought, I’ll take what I imagined would be a spiral-bound pamphlet called All-Clad’s All-Time Favorite Recipes. At least it was something.
A couple weeks later, a plain box arrived in the mail. Inside was Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Plus, some cute, heart-shaped pancake molds. Was this a spot-on gift from a friend? No card, no explanation. There was only a tiny return address from something called “Groupe SEB.” Turns out they own All-Clad.
The All-Clad Test
It seemed fitting to test the cookware with a recipe from the book. We compared the All-Clad D5 5-ply stainless steel 12-inch skillet with a Viking 3-ply stainless steel 12-inch skillet (an excellent pan we recently snapped up at TJ Maxx).
This wasn’t exactly a fair comparison, since the number of stainless steel layers affects performance. Pans with more layers hold heat better and are more durable. They also cost more.
As expected, the All-Clad 5-ply took longer to get hot, but held the heat and cooked evenly. The 3-ply Viking pan heated faster for a quick sear, but toasted the butter before the fillets cooked through.
The Lesson
First, we’re quite happy with the performance of the All-Clad on our new induction cooktop. And we’ve fallen for the lemon chicken.
But All-Clad’s deceptive marketing (which they may have corrected, although they still bury the list of exclusions) left a sour taste in my mouth.
And it just goes to show—you never know what experience will lead to a recipephany.
Marcella Hazan’s Sauteéd Fillets of Breast of Chicken with Lemon and Parsley, Siena Style
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (or fewer, if the breasts are large or you don’t want so many fillets)
- Juice of one lemon, freshly squeezed (or more, to taste)
- 3 tablespoons chopped parsley
- Garnish: 1 lemon, sliced thin
- Salt
- Pepper, freshly ground
- Slice each half breast in half horizontally to create two equal fillets. If there is a tenderloin, cut it off, remove its white tendon, and use that, too. For six chicken breast halves, you will have a total of 18 pieces, including the small tenderloins. Gently pound the fillets to a somewhat uniform thickness.
- Put the oil and 3 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet and set heat to medium high. When the butter foam subsides, add as many of the fillets as will fit loosely. Cook briefly on both sides, less than 1 minute altogether. Larger breasts may take a little more time.
- Transfer the fillets to a warm plate and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat until all the fillets are done.
- Add the lemon juice to the skillet, and let it simmer briskły over medium heat for about 20 seconds, scraping loose bits from the bottom and sides of the pan with a wooden spoon. Add chopped parsley and remaining tablespoon of butter, stir rapidly for 4 or 5 seconds, then turn the heat down to low and return the fillets to the pan together with any juices in the plate. Turn over the fillets in the sauce two or three times, then transfer, together with the sauce, to a warm platter. Garnish with the thin lemon slices and serve at once.
