Scallopini, Paleo Style

This recipe is a perfect one to illustrate the idea that you do NOT need to thicken sauces, a topic which I'm frequently asked about.

The traditional recipe for chicken or veal (or any) scallopini would call for butter as well as flour to thicken the sauce.  Aside from that, most ingredients are in keeping with Paleo.  You can even find fresh capers online, so that you needn't buy the salty, vinegar-infused type that you'd likely find in the local shoppes.

As far as the butter, it's easy to swap that out for extra virgin olive oil.

But what about the flour?

OK, think about this:  what does white flour taste like?  If you literally ate some by itself, would it taste like anything at all?  NO!  So then, we consider, why would we add it to a sauce? Well, to thicken it, right?  

But why does it have to be THICK?

I made my scalllopini sauce and yes, it was thin BUT guess how I remedied that? I served the meat on a lofty bed of steamed greeens and then ladeled the sauce on top.

No need to sop it up with bread, pasta or rice, or thicken it up in the first place.  Rather, you can just enjoy the balance of the flavors of the lemon, chicken broth, garlic, shallots and parsley in addition to those of the meat you're using.

 Try this:

• Pound out chicken cutlets with meat tenderizer tool.
• Using freshly ground almonds (in lieu of white flour, of course), dredge the meat in the meal, then cook 2 – 3' minutes per side in olive oil over medium.
• Remove from pan and set in a dish in a preheated 300 F oven.
• Add minced shallots, garlic to oil and cook for a minute.
• Add chicken broth and lemon slices and cook at a high heat to reduce a bit.
• Add chopped parsley, then pour the sauce over the chicken and serve on a bed of greens.

We had ours with a mache and pear salad, roasted sprouts (recipe on tomorrow's blog) and some of my famous Paleo Baked Yam Fries to fuel the next day's training: