Simple and frugal: Lemony Chicken Scaloppine

This is another meal that is easy to plan and cook with only a few ingredients, most of which I keep in my pantry. It is a quick and delicious meal from the cookbook The Pleasure of Cooking for One by Judith Jones.

Originally, this is pork scaloppine, made with pork tenderloin. I changed this up to chicken, because it is simple to use boneless chicken breasts for this particular recipe. Substitute 1 breast for 1-2 people, or 2 breasts for 2-4 meals, depending on your appetite and whether you combine this with a salad, vegetable side dish and a light dessert. It is in fact a wonderful low carb/high protein meal with a fresh and delicious flavor.

Last night I cooked this is a slightly different way, again adjusting for in-house ingredients. I was out of fresh lemons, so substituted blood oranges for the sliced fruit and the juice. I added one orange for each breast (I'm looking at 3 meals). But I was also pointed in this direction by a bottle of blood orange infused olive oil I bought a little while ago, that I substituted for the plain olive oil. This added only another layer of the orange flavor, and mostly cooked off.

In addition, I sprinkled a 1/2 to 1 tsp. of cumin over the cooking chicken to off-set the sweeter flavor of the blood orange.

The final product was just as delicious as the original, but with a new flavor. I could also have used navel oranges and plain olive oil as a third choice. Tangy and bright, this left me with several options for this dish I have used several times to wow guests. So simple, so quick to make, this is a crowd-pleaser. Again, something you can quickly whip up from pantry ingredients, inexpensively.

This recipe alone is a reason for having a couple of shallots in-house.