Italian Porcini Chicken Breast with Crispy Polenta | Petto di Pollo con Porcini e Polenta Croccante
Crispy polenta is not a garnish invented for restaurants. In the Piedmontese foothills it is what happens to yesterday's polenta: the pot sets overnight into a firm block, the block is cut into slabs, and the slabs go onto a griddle until the outside cracks and the inside stays soft. This dish builds a plate around that habit, with a chicken breast and a pan of porcini on top.
The chicken is the part most cooks get wrong, because a breast is lean, uneven in thickness and dry within ninety seconds of being overcooked. Here it is brined briefly, seared skin side down in foaming butter, then finished on low heat while the porcini cook in the same fat. A splash of white wine and a knob of cold butter turn what is left into a short glossy sauce, and nothing leaves the pan.
Three elements, three textures: a crust on the polenta, a crust on the chicken, and porcini browned rather than stewed. Get those right and the dish is complete. The thyme, the garlic and the Grana are only seasoning around them.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 30 minutes plus polenta setting time. Cook: 1 hour 10 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 40 minutes plus overnight setting. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: secondo piatto. Region: Piedmont, the Valsesia and the Ossola.
The Story
The mountain valleys of northern Piedmont, the Valsesia above Varallo and the Ossola on the Swiss border, have eaten polenta daily for as long as maize has grown in the plain below them. What distinguishes the cooking here is what happens to the leftovers. A family cooked a large pot in the morning, poured the surplus onto a wooden board to set, and cut it cold for the rest of the week. Grilled on the embers or fried in butter, those slabs became the plate for whatever the day provided.
What it provided in September and October was porcini. The chestnut and beech woods on these slopes produce Boletus edulis in quantity, and gathering them is still a regulated ritual, with day permits, weight limits and families who guard a productive slope the way others guard a recipe. Fresh porcini were cooked the day they were picked; the rest were sliced and dried above the stove, which is why every pantry here holds a bag of dried porcini and why the soaking water is never thrown away.
Chicken belongs to the same economy. A hen in a mountain household was a working animal that laid until it stopped, and the meat was stewed. Cooking a breast quickly in butter is a modern habit from the trattorie of Novara and Biella that fed factory workers a fast second course. This plate is that trattoria idea with the mountain pantry behind it: polenta from the board, porcini from the wood, butter rather than oil, no tomato anywhere.
Ingredients
For the polenta
Coarse stone ground maize flour, bramata, 1 1/4 cups (200 g)
Water, 4 1/4 cups (1 liter)
Coarse sea salt, 2 tsp (12 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Grana Padano, finely grated, 1 oz (30 g)
For the chicken
Chicken breasts, skin on, boneless, 4, about 7 oz (200 g) each
Water, for the brine, 4 cups (950 ml)
Fine sea salt, for the brine, 2 tbsp (35 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Garlic clove, lightly crushed, 1
Fresh thyme sprigs, 3
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the porcini
Fresh porcini, firm and dry, 12 oz (340 g)
Dried porcini, 1/3 oz (10 g)
Warm water, for soaking, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Unsalted butter, 1 1/2 tbsp (21 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Shallot, finely diced, 1 small
Dry white wine, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp
For finishing
Unsalted butter, cold, cubed, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Grana Padano, finely grated, 1/2 oz (15 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, for the polenta slabs, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1: Cook the polenta and set it overnight
Bring the water and coarse salt to a boil, rain in the maize flour while whisking hard, then lower the heat until the surface plops rather than boils. Cook 40 minutes with a wooden spoon, stirring often and scraping the base. Beat in the butter and Grana, pour it about 3/4 inch (2 cm) deep onto an oiled tray and refrigerate uncovered at least 6 hours, ideally overnight, until it cuts cleanly.
Step 2: Brine the chicken and dry it
Dissolve the brine salt in the water and submerge the breasts for 30 minutes, no longer, since a lean breast turns spongy in a long brine. Lift them out, rinse briefly and dry every surface on paper, above all the skin. Leave them uncovered on a rack for 20 minutes. Dry skin is the whole condition for a crisp sear, and a wet breast will not colour however hot the pan is.
Step 3: Soak the dried porcini and clean the fresh ones
Cover the dried porcini with the warm water for 20 minutes. Lift them out, chop them and keep the liquid, strained through a paper filter to leave the grit behind. Clean the fresh porcini with a brush and a barely damp cloth, never under a tap, since a porcino absorbs water like a sponge and a wet mushroom steams instead of browning. Slice them about 1/3 inch (8 mm) thick.
Step 4: Fry the polenta slabs
Turn out the set polenta and cut it into 8 rectangles. Heat the olive oil in a wide nonstick pan over medium high heat and lay the slabs in without crowding. Give them 4 to 5 minutes on the first side without moving them, until a hard golden crust forms and they release on their own, then turn and repeat. Hold them on a rack, never on paper, where trapped steam softens the underside in a minute.
Step 5: Sear the chicken, then finish it gently
Warm the butter and oil in a heavy pan over medium heat until the butter foams. Lay the breasts skin side down, press them flat for 20 seconds and leave them 6 to 7 minutes until the skin is deep gold. Turn them, add the garlic and thyme, lower the heat and cook 6 to 8 minutes more, spooning the foaming butter over. Pull them at 158°F (70°C) and rest on a rack 8 minutes.
Step 6: Brown the porcini in the same pan
Pour off all but a spoonful of the fat, raise the heat and add the fresh butter and oil. Lay the porcini in one layer and leave them 3 minutes without stirring: they release water, and the moment it evaporates they begin to brown. Add the shallot and the chopped soaked porcini, cook 2 minutes, then salt. Salting earlier stalls the browning entirely.
Step 7: Deglaze and mount the pan sauce
Pour in the white wine and scrape the base until every browned fragment lifts, add 3 tablespoons of the strained porcini liquid and reduce until the pan is almost dry. Off the heat, add the cold butter one cube at a time and swirl until the sauce is glossy and coats the mushrooms. Stir in the parsley, add the juices from the resting chicken and taste for salt.
Plating
Warm the plates, but only to hand warm. Very hot plates keep cooking a rested breast and soften the polenta crust from underneath. Set two slabs slightly overlapping, off centre, and leave the rest of the plate clear.
Slice each breast across the grain into four or five thick pieces, skin attached, and lean them against the polenta so the golden skin stays visible and out of the sauce. A whole breast looks generous and eats worse: slices show the centre is moist and take sauce better.
Spoon the porcini and their sauce over the chicken and into the gap between the meat and the polenta, never over the polenta itself. Finish with a light grating of Grana over the mushrooms, a turn of black pepper and nothing else. The plate should read as three clear elements, not as a stew poured over bread.
Professional Technique
The technique that defines this plate is not the chicken, it is the polenta, and it works only because the polenta was cooked and cooled before it ever met hot fat. Stirred into boiling salted water, the maize starch granules swell and rupture, releasing long amylose chains into the liquid. That is gelatinization. Hot polenta can never fry: the water inside is still free to move and simply steams off the surface.
The useful change happens in the refrigerator. As the gelatinized polenta cools, those loose amylose chains realign and lock onto one another, trapping the water in an ordered network. Cooks call it setting, food science calls it retrogradation, and the result is a firm solid with a clean cut face. Six hours cold is the minimum, overnight is better. A slab set at room temperature slumps in the pan.
Frying then acts on a solid face rather than a liquid one. The cut surface meets fat at 350°F (175°C), the water film there leaves as steam, and the dehydrated retrograded starch sets into a rigid glassy shell while the centre stays creamy, because the water locked inside cannot escape fast enough to dry it. The fat must already be hot, since a slab lowered into warm fat drinks it up and turns greasy, and the slab must not be touched for four minutes, because lifting it early strips the crust off the face.
Texture and Moisture Control
The polenta crust has a short life and everything on the plate threatens it. Steam is the main one: slabs left on paper or stacked on a warm plate soften from underneath in a minute. Keep them on a wire rack in a low oven, in one layer, and plate them last. Sauce is the second threat, which is why the porcini go over the chicken and not the polenta.
The chicken is controlled by temperature rather than time, because breasts vary by an ounce or two and an extra ounce is two extra minutes. A probe is the only honest way to judge it: 158°F (70°C) at the thickest point, then eight minutes of rest, during which carryover takes it to a safe and still juicy 165°F (74°C). Cut it immediately and the juices run onto the board.
The pan sauce is a fragile emulsion. Cold butter swirled into a hot but not boiling pan disperses into droplets held by the reduced liquid, giving a glossy sauce that coats. If the pan is too hot the butter melts into free oil and the sauce splits. Take it off the heat before the butter goes in, add it a cube at a time, and keep the pan moving.
Professional Mise en Place
The polenta is a day ahead job and the rest is fast, so service is about having one pan free at the right moment.
Equipment and tools
Heavy bottomed pot and a long wooden spoon for the polenta
Shallow tray, lightly oiled, for setting the polenta
Wide nonstick pan for the slabs, heavy pan for the chicken
Probe thermometer, mushroom brush, paper filter
Wire rack for resting the chicken and holding the polenta
Prepared ahead
Polenta cooked, poured and set, up to 2 days ahead, refrigerated
Dried porcini soaked and the liquid strained, up to 1 day ahead
Fresh porcini brushed and sliced, up to 4 hours ahead
Shallot diced, thyme picked, Grana grated, on the day
Chicken brined and dried on a rack, 50 minutes before service
Service setup
Polenta slabs fried first and held on a rack in a low oven
Chicken searing while the porcini wait beside the pan
Strained porcini liquid and wine within reach
Cold butter cubed and kept cold until the sauce is mounted
Plates warmed to hand warm, never hot
Chef Tips
Use both fresh and dried porcini, even in full season. The fresh give texture and a clean woodland aroma, the dried and their strained liquid give the deep savoury base that drying concentrates. Neither does the other job, and a dish built on one alone tastes incomplete.
Buy chicken breasts with the skin on. Skinless breasts cannot give the crust this plate is built around, and the rendered skin fat is what cooks the porcini. If only skinless is available, sear in clarified butter and accept that it is a different, simpler dish.
Keep 30 minutes as the hard limit on the brine. Salt at this strength firms the proteins and helps the meat hold moisture, but past about 40 minutes it starts to break them down and the cooked breast turns faintly spongy and tastes cured rather than roasted.
If fresh porcini are out of season, double the dried to 3/4 oz (20 g) and bulk the pan with firm brown cultivated mushrooms rather than white. Do not reach for cream. The plate survives losing the fresh mushrooms; it does not survive becoming a cream sauce.
Common Mistakes
Washing the porcini under the tap. A porcino absorbs water immediately and a waterlogged slice steams grey instead of browning. Brush the cap, wipe the stem with a damp cloth, and trim rather than rinse.
Frying the polenta before it is properly set. Warm polenta collapses in the pan and sticks, and no crust forms on a surface that keeps moving. It needs at least 6 hours cold, and it cuts cleanly straight from the refrigerator.
Cooking the chicken at one steady heat. A breast is uneven, so a single heat overcooks the thin end before the thick end is done. Sear hot for the crust, drop the heat for the centre, judge it with a probe.
Salting the mushrooms at the start. Salt draws water out of the porcini and keeps the pan in a steaming phase where nothing browns. Season them at the end, after the slices have taken colour.
Boiling the pan sauce after adding the butter. Heat above a gentle warmth breaks the emulsion and the sauce separates into oil and liquid instead of coating the mushrooms. Mount it off the heat, one cube at a time, swirling.
Wine Pairing
Roero Arneis DOCG: The Piedmontese white and the easiest match for a butter based plate. Arneis is dry and low in acid for a white, with pear, white flowers and a faintly waxy body that meets the butter without fighting it. What it really supplies is the bitter almond finish, which lands on the earthiness of the porcini and keeps the mushrooms from tasting flat.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: The classic red for mushrooms, and the safest here because it has the weight of a white. Alpine Pinot Nero keeps high acidity and fine light tannin, and its forest floor and dried strawberry aromatics run parallel to porcini rather than covering them. It is light enough not to bury a chicken breast. Serve it at 57°F (14°C).
Nebbiolo d'Alba DOC: Nebbiolo without the years in wood, for anyone who wants tannin on the plate. Its rose and tar aromatics are a known partner for porcini, and the firm acidity cuts the rendered skin fat and the mounted butter. Choose a young bottle, since tertiary complexity would overshadow a simple pan sauce.
Barbera d'Asti DOCG: High acidity, almost no tannin, dark cherry fruit: the everyday red of the Piedmontese table and a practical choice with anything cooked in butter. The acidity does the work, scrubbing fat between mouthfuls, and the absence of tannin means it never dries a lean breast. Avoid oaked versions, whose vanilla sits awkwardly beside the mushrooms.
Gattinara DOCG: Nebbiolo from Alto Piemonte, grown on volcanic porphyry near the woods these porcini come from. It is leaner and more savoury than Barolo, with an iron and woodsmoke edge that suits browned mushrooms and a crisp polenta crust. Keep it for a plate with plenty of porcini, since it needs something earthy to answer it.
Storage & Reheating
Store the three parts separately, never assembled. Cooked chicken keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 days. Reheat it covered at 300°F (150°C) for 8 to 10 minutes rather than in a pan, which cooks a lean breast a second time. A microwave ruins the skin entirely.
The porcini and their sauce keep 2 days refrigerated in a sealed container. Rewarm them gently with a spoonful of water, off fierce heat, since the butter emulsion splits if it boils again. Cooked porcini freeze for 2 months but lose firmness, so use those in a risotto rather than on this plate.
Uncooked set polenta keeps 3 days wrapped in the refrigerator and freezes well for 2 months as cut slabs, separated by parchment. Fry them from frozen, giving each side about 2 minutes longer. Fried slabs do not keep: they soften within the hour and cannot be crisped a second time, so cut only what you plan to cook.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 640 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 165 mg
Sodium: 870 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 42 g
Fiber: 4 g
Total Sugars: 3 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 48 g
Lactose: 1.8 g
Principal micronutrients: niacin, vitamin B6, selenium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, vitamin D
These figures are estimates. Most of the brine salt is discarded rather than eaten, and the sodium depends on how much Grana is grated over the plate.
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