Easy, delightful, and yummy: Citrus chicken breasts.

Ciao, ragazzi.  Readers will have noticed that Annalena and the Guyman eat a fair amount of chicken, usually on the bone, and usually legs and thighs.  We DO eat the classic boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but Annalena usually saves those dishes for quick lunches on the weekends, when she wants to make some high protein, relatively healthy (emphasis on the "relatively" here ragazzi), and not too challenging to make.  

Well, sometimes she wants to do that for dinner.  When she saw this recipe, she thought immediately that it was a perfect supper dinner. And it is.  You can make this for yourself, BUT, in Annalena's view, there are parts of it that make it suitable for informal company as well.  If you're not comfortable in the kitchen, this is also a VERY good place to start gaining experience.  Let's begin.  And we begin by thanking Mark Bittman for the recipe.

First, let's see our ingredients:

What you see there are all of them:  two large, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a couple of limes, a large orange, a couple of tablespoons of butter, and some olive oil.  We also have, of course, the ubiquitous salt and pepper.  Now, here we go.  And this goes fast.  So, ATTENZIONE!

First, cut the orange in half, in the middle (as if you were making half grapefruits).  Do the same thing for one of the limes.  Squeeze the juice out of one half of the orange, and the lime:

The next thing you do, is pour a quarter cup of flour onto a plate.  Spread it out, and add some salt and pepper.  Then, put the butter and olive oil in a pan - two tablespoons of each, and your butter is unsalted.   Heat this at a medium high flame, until the butter is melted and bubbling:

While this is happening, quickly "dredge" the chicken breasts in the seasoned flour.  By "dredging" , all you're trying to do is cover each side, completely, with the flour.  Once you have that done, drop them into the cooking fat, and lower your heat to medium:

You're going to be cooking these for five minutes on a side.  And while they're cooking, slice the peel off the remaining half of the orange, and cut the segments apart.  If you put the cut side down on a counter, you will see EXACTLY where to cut.  And as is frequently the case, surgical precision is not the goal here. 

After ten minutes of cooking, your chicken is going to look something like this, and you're going to have a bit of fairly brown "stuff" in the pan.  

This is a good thing.  Take those cooked chicken breasts out of the pan, put them on a plate and cover, while you finish this off. 

Remember that juice you expressed from the fruit?  Well, you add it to this stuff at the top, again at medium high heat, and swirl it around for about 2 minutes.   Then, you add those orange segments you prepared while the chicken was cooking, and you add them to the reduced juice, for all of about a minute. 

Finally, just put the cooked chicken back in the pan, turn it to cover it with sauce, and ... VOILA:

So you're thinking  "what about that second lime?" AH, you can go several ways. First, you don't have to use it at all.  Following the recipe to a "T", you slice it and add it as garnish. Annalena squeezed the juice into her sauce.  (Of course, you COULD make margaritas. )

Now if that is not a perfect dish for a busy night, Annalena thinks you need to quit your job.  So, give it a try ragazzi.  This one seems to be absolutely seasonally independent, but as fruit gets scarce, and we're all trying to up our vitamin C... here it is. 

If you try no other recipes from this blog, ragazzi, PLEASE  try this one.  You will be very glad you did, and you will have something very easy and tasty in your repertoire.