Piccata is an Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 word. It is sometimes wrongly spelled "picatta" or "pichotta." The word "piccato", to which it may be related, may be a translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 of the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 piqué, past participle of piquer ("to prick, lard"), though it doesn't seem to fit the culinary use of the Italian term which means "to be pounded flat".

In Italian it is used only in reference to a way of preparing food. When used in reference to a way of preparing food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

, particularly meat

Meat

Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...

 or fish, it means "sliced, sautéed

Sautéing

Sautéing is a method of cooking food, that uses a small amount of fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking. The primary mode of heat transfer during sautéing is conduction between the pan and the food being...

, and served in a sauce

Sauce

In cooking, a sauce is liquid, creaming or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsus, meaning salted...

 containing lemon

Lemon

The lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...

, butter

Butter

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...

, and spice

Spice

A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...

s, usually parsley." The best known dish of this sort (in the United States) is chicken piccata, using chicken

Chicken (food)

Chicken is the most common type of poultry in the world, and is prepared as food in a wide variety of ways, varying by region and culture.- History :...

, but the term originated and is most commonly used, in Italy, with veal

Veal

Veal is the meat of young cattle , as opposed to meat from older cattle. Though veal can be produced from a calf of either sex and any breed, most veal comes from male calves of dairy cattle breeds...

 (veal piccata). Vegetarians and Vegans have adapted the recipe to be used with seitan (seitan piccata).

A chicken breast used to prepare chicken piccata is usually butterflied

Butterflying

Butterflying is a cutting technique used by butchers to transform a thick, compact piece of meat into a thinner, larger one. The piece of meat to be cut is laid out flat on a cutting board and cut in half parallel to the board from one side almost all the way to the other. A small "hinge" is left...

, or sliced along its width, and then flattened either with a tenderizer

Meat tenderizer

A meat tenderizer is hand-powered tool used to tenderize slabs of meat in preparation for cooking the meat. Although a meat tenderizer can be made out of virtually any object there are three types that manufactured specifically for tenderizing meat. The first, most common, is a tool that resembles...

 or between two pieces of wax paper

Wax paper

Wax paper is a kind of paper that is made moisture proof through the application of wax....

. It is then seasoned and dredged in flour before being browned on both sides in butter

Butter

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...

 or olive oil

Olive oil

Olive oil is an oil obtained from the olive , a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps...

. The sauce is made using the pan drippings. Lemon juice or white wine is added to the pan and reduced

Reduction (cooking)

In cooking, reduction is the process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice by boiling....

. Shallot

Shallot

The shallot is the botanical variety of Allium cepa to which the multiplier onion also belongs. It was formerly classified as the species A. ascalonicum, a name now considered a synonym of the correct name...

s or garlic

Garlic

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion genus, Allium. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, and rakkyo. Dating back over 6,000 years, garlic is native to central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent...

 can be added with the capers and slices of lemon. When reduced, butter is stirred in to finish the sauce. In the United States it is usually served with a starch, such as pasta

Pasta

Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...

, polenta

Polenta

Polenta is a dish made from boiled cornmeal. The word "polenta" is borrowed from Italian.-Description:Polenta is made with ground yellow or white cornmeal , which can be ground coarsely or finely depending on the region and the texture desired.As it is known today, polenta derives from earlier...

, or rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

though in Italy this is almost never done as veal piccata is a "secondo" (entree) and would be served after the pasta (or other starch) course. It might instead be accompanied by a "contorno" or side-dish.