Gremolata!

I’ve been trying to remember that word since last night’s dinner.  It just came to me. Of course what I thought it described isn’t exactly right but I knew what I meant.

Gremolata is a mixture of parsley, lemon peel and garlic. Its often served as a condiment over fish.   At some time in the past, I had a recipe for gremolata mixed with bread crumbs then added to the top of the fish for the last few minutes of baking.

Last night, we made something sort of similar.  It started out as a breading gone bad. Chris had been marinating some chicken breasts in this barbeque sauce we found in Canada, Diana Sauce: Garlic Honey.  He was in charge of dinner last night and wanted to toss the marinated chicken in some panko crumbs for a crispy coating.  He mixed some grated cheese in with the crumbs and we tossed each piece of chicken in to a ziploc bag.  Even though this wastes crumbs, it generally works well and keeps messes to a minimum.

It became obvious quite quickly that the breading wasn’t sticking.  And the pan was a little too hot so the butter was burning the coating. I turned the heat down and we got the chicken finished then I used a little water to clean the pan before melting two tablespoons of butter along with one mashed garlic clove.  After the butter was done foaming, I added 1 chopped red onion along with a little salt and pepper.  After the onions got nice and soft and most of the butter was absorbed, I took the bread crumbs that would otherwise have been lost and mixed about 1/4 cup in to the onions.  The crumbs started to turn light golden brown and get crunchy.  I still had some crumbs left so I pushed the onions to the side and spread the rest of the crumbs in an almost dry pan.  And they toasted up beautifully.

We served the chicken topped with the onions then I sprinkled the plain toasted crumbs over the garlic pasta we also had.

Courtney to the rescue!