Jan 22: Egg Lemon Soup (Avgolemono)

After poaching the chicken for the mole and the rest of the bones, I made a chicken stock. Also, with a half lemon from last night, I wanted to try making an Egg Lemon Soup, which is a classic Greek soup, Avgolemono.

Another plus is the few ingredients needed to make the soup.

For today, I made a small batch to try it out.

Egg Lemon Soup
2 C Chicken Broth
1 egg white, whipped to stiff peaks
1 egg yolk
1/2 Lemon, juiced
1/2 C Rice, I had cooked brown rice


1. Bring the stock to a boil... turn off the heat.

2. Beat the egg yolk and combine with the egg white.

3. When the stock is ready, mix the lemon juice into the egg mixture.

4. Temper the egg mixture, by slowly adding about 1 Cup of hot stock while mixing the egg mixture.

Tempering the egg.


Pour the egg into the hot stock, turn heat to medium. Generally, the instructions are to heat the soup without boiling or simmering, to prevent curdling, until thick.
NOTE: Being a geek, I placed a thermometer into the soup and cooked to 170F. Why 170F? Supposedly, temperatures above 160F will destroy any bad bacteria lurking in the egg. The extra 10 F is to account for any inaccuracies in the thermometer.


The finished soup garnished with a little green onion.


A nice chicken soup with a tart lemon finish. The soup wasn't as thick as I hoped, but still had a nice velvety consistency.

Jan 21: Chicken Piccata (Attempt)

All the vinegar tasting this past week must have triggered my craving for Chicken Piccata.
Here's my attempt to make Chicken piccata. Another bonus is the minimal amount of ingredients.

Chicken Piccata
1/2 Chicken Breast, butterflied
1 C Chicken Broth
1/2 Lemon, Juiced
1 T Capers
2T Butter
Dash of Salt, Pepper and Garlic Powder

1) Butterfly chicken breast - I butterflied into thirds.


2. Pound the chicken breast. I didn't have a mallet so I tried a can which sort of worked....


But I realized that the flat of the cleaver would do a better job, plus it made a lot of noise.


The ingredients for the sauce - flour for dredging the chicken, homemade chicken stock, half a lemon, capers and butter.


3. Dredge and panfry the chicken fillets about 3 minutes per side... until brown.


4. Set the chicken aside.


5. Add the broth to deglaze the pan and allow to reduce 50%. I also added 1/2 the capers.


6. Ooops... I reduced the broth by 2/3 instead of 1/2.... Added the rest of the capers, lemon juice and butter.


7. Pour sauce onto chicken.


Keeping in the theme of green (round) and cream colors... The piccata was served with green peas and spaghetti. :-)

Wow! The sauce is very lemony. I like it. The capers add a dijon-ness to the chicken. The dish reminded me of a lemon dijon chicken. I would have liked more sauce (more broth next time), but the lemony chicken piccata hit the spot!