chicken marsala

greetings krisirisi readers! welcome to my first recipe post. these will be rather unconventional in style. i don’t really like to measure things and i combine different recipes i find online to fit my needs. so no 2 cups of this and tablespoon of that.

in my attempt to expand my horizons and try new things, i decided to cook a new dish this evening. chicken marsala. i’ve had it at restaurants but never attempted to make it myself. not a big mushroom person, i tend to think of them as a fungus. but i realized that when i have had them they taste alright and i haven’t gotten sick, so why not?

the ingredients i found common to most recipes online were pretty basic:

• salt
• black pepper
• flour
• oregano
• butter
• olive oil
• chicken stock
• chicken boob (hee hee)
• mushrooms
• sherry wine
• marsala wine

i had everything on the list except for the last 3 items. one article said to use sherry cooking wine. not quite sure how that differs from regular wine or where to find it. so i just went to the trader joe’s wine store and asked them what would be best. on fridays the wine store has a line going all the way down the block. probably because they sell such inexpensive wine. i’m not sure if that’s good or bad, though. i once read that you should only cook with wine that you would want to drink. i kept this in mind when the person working there told me they sold more of the $4.99 wine than the $10.99 wine. i said, maybe because it’s half the price?

i got the more expensive, pellegrino marsala. i figured -fancy water, fancy wine, right? i also got pre-cut and washed (although i washed them again) white mushrooms at another store across the street.

sidebar about the other store – after i found the “shrooms” i asked somebody working there if they had cooking wine. he said i think so, but not over here. i was in the produce section at the end of the store, so clearly, the wine would not be there. so i kind of looked over his shoulder with a confused look on my face. i said, ok, where? he said – try one of those aisles over there. you mean one of the other 12 aisles that make up the entire store? really? that’s as specific as you can get? thanks a lot person who works at the grocery store and knows it way better than me. this is why i ended up getting the wine at trader joes.

so i finally make it home and start my dinner. i decided to have rice and sauteed spinach with my chicken. this is what i did (i won’t say this is what you should do, cause i’m no culinary expert. for example, i had the bright idea of flipping one of the pieces of chicken as it cooked in hot oily sauce rather than gently turning it over. very bright):

1. put the water on for the instant brown rice, once it was boiling, but the bag in
2. i had sort of sliced the chicken the night before and put some meat tenderizer on it. it wasn’t exactly even and i ended up with one big piece and a little piece. all good though.
3. heated up the olive oil
4. didn’t have a meat hammer, pounder thingy, so i wrapped the chicken in plastic wrap and pounded it with my fists to make it flat. that was fun.
5. combined the dry ingredients
6. coated the chicken- shook off excess
7. removed rice from water and seasoned with a little butter, salt and pepper
8. plopped the chicken in the pan – browning each side for a few minutes. put the chicken on a plate
9. added butter to the pan
10. added mushrooms, cooked until brown (tho i think they would have been brown just because of the oil
11. added more butter
12. poured in 1/2 cup of marsala and 1/4 cup of sherry. these were the only things i measured. both were dry wines.
13. let that cook/boil for a few minutes
14. cut up some onion and zucchini – threw the onions in a smaller pan with some olive oil
15. put the chicken back in the pan – it took longer to cook than i expected. probably wasn’t thin enough and i didn’t have a top for the pan, so i think it took longer
16. added the zucchini to the smaller pan. cooked the onions and zucchini some more
17. realized i had a potato for a baked potato and i would rather have that than the rice
18. when the chicken was about done i threw the spinach in the smaller pan.

and viola – chicken marsala with baked potato and spinach!

even though i cooked with darker wines, i chose to have a glass of riesling with my meal. it was quite tasty. and i had enough left over for lunch the next day since i had also cooked the rice.

i’m not sure why, but my desire to cook is very sporadic. some days i won’t cook a thing then i’ll go all out with something new. today was a cooking day. what’s on your menu?