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Chicken Marsala

March 21st, 2008 at 11:01am me

Want to Bet Me that I know exactly what you thought of when you read that title?

Earlier this month I took a cooking class through the local school district’s community education services. I’ve taken several classes this way – Soups of the World (Polish Beet Soup, anyone?) and Mediterranean Cooking (fabulous spanikopita), among others – for several reasons: I love to cook, I love to eat, it sounded interesting (Polish Beet Soup, anyone?), and people say it’s a good way to meet single men.

No one told that to the single men.

Anyway, this class’s theme was Chicken Dinners, with one of the recipes being the aforementioned Chicken Marsala. You know I could not pass that one up, being both Italian and a Jenny Crusie fan.

Generally I like these classes, but this one was different in that she taught us how NOT to make dinner. She decided that, despite the class fee and the $10 per person materials fee, she would save money by buying bone-in, skin-on whole chicken breasts. Anyone who has ever had Chicken Marsala knows that is not how it’s made. But, that’s what we did. So we had two extra steps: pulling off the skins (ick), and then after pan-frying for brownness, baking the chicken to finish cooking it in slow middle-school home-ec cheap-ass ovens to make sure we didn’t die. This added 45 minutes and a lot of standing around to the process. In the end, however, it turned out fabulously yummy and I snarfed it all down.

So, knowing you are all Crusie fans and knowing you all like to share recipes and cook and eat, here is the recipe for Chicken Marsala (the correct way). (I also have recipes from this class for Chicken a la King, Almond Boneless Chicken, and Forty Garlic Clove Chicken, if anyone is interested.)

Ingredients:

Four 4-6 oz boneless/skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon oregano

4 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

one 8-oz package sliced mushrooms

1/2 cup marsala wine

linguine

Flatten the chicken breasts to 1/2-inch thickness between 2 sheets plastic wrap, using a meat mallet or hammering with a rolling pin or a can or whatever’s heavy.

Boil linguine to directions on box.

Mix flour, salt, pepper, and oregano on large plate. Coat chicken in mixture, shaking off excess.

Heat olive oil and butter in frying pan over medium-high heat. Place chicken in heated oil, do not overcrowd. Cook three minutes on each side to brown it. Remove chicken and keep warm in the oven.

Add mushrooms to the frying pan. Cook 2-3 minutes until a little browned on both sides. Add Marsala wine and stir for 1 minute, loosening brown bits from bottom of pan.

Add a pat of butter to make sauce creamy/shiny, and add salt & pepper to taste. (I cannot give you better directions than that, as another thing I didn’t like about the class was the instructor came to our stove and did this herself, to make it to her tastes, without telling us how much she added.)

Drain and plate the linguini, put chicken on top, and pour mushroom sauce over it.

Eat.

Entry Filed under: Food and Cooking