I remembered this little restaurant across from the Port Authority when I lived in New York City that was a pasta store in front and a restaurant in back where they served great chicken Piccata. I think it was called Supreme Macaroni and was where they shot the album cover Billy Joel's Scenes from an Italian Restaurant but I'm not sure of the latter.

I knew it was basically a flour, lemon and butter sauce but I wanted to find a recipe to refresh my memory before jumping into it. After looking through a bunch of my favorite Italian cookbooks for chicken or veal piccata recipes without success, I finally gave up and found a recipe for Veal Piccata in my New Basics Cookbook.

What's going on here? I started thinking that maybe these aren't Italian dishes but a quick check in my Food Lover's Companion proved to me that yes, these are indeed from Italy. When I looked in my refrigerator, I realized we didn't have any lemons and this is not an easy dish to make without a lemon and I didn't feel like running to the grocery store.