Chicken Paillard with Arugula and Fennel

In this dish, thin chicken cutlets are flash-cooked and topped with an enticing mixture of arugula and fennel for a light, fresh-tasting dinner. 

A paillard is a piece of chicken or meat pounded until it is very thin and almost doubled in size and then cooked quickly. If you don’t have the patience to pound properly, there are several tricks you can use to speed up the process. One is to butterfly each breast by cutting partially through it, so it opens like a book, creating one very large piece to pound. Other ways are to buy “thin-sliced” boneless chicken cutlets, or to make your own by slicing each breast in half lengthwise and then using a mallet to compress those slices. These methods will give you pieces about half of the size of using a full breast so you might need two pieces per serving. 

Use a mandolin or a very sharp knife to thinly slice the fennel.