Chicken Marsala

One of my favorite chicken dishes is chicken marsala which combines sweet marsala wine with mushrooms, garlic and onion on top of a thinly pounded chicken breast. I have found that the quality of the marsala sauce at restaurants varies greatly in terms of texture, sweetness and number of mushrooms. So, I found several  recipes and combined them into one that that contains my favorite elements - a nice hearty, thick, sweet sauce with plenty of mushrooms. The recipe below yields 4 servings. Enjoy!

HELPFUL HINTS
1. The sauce shouldn't be made too far ahead or it will thicken too much. The sauce takes 10-15 minutes so try to time it to be ready right when the chicken is done.
2. I used a combination of white and shiitake mushrooms but you can use whatever you prefer.
3. If you don't have any beef stock, you can make it yourself using beef bouillon cubes in water. It did the job just fine.

INGREDIENTS
4 chicken breasts, pounded to 1/4 inch thickness and cooked (in a pan or on a grill)
3 Tbs olive oil
1/4 cup onion, diced
1 Tbs garlic, chopped
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced
3 Tbs flour
3/4 cup Marsala wine
1 1/4 cups beef stock
Salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS
1. Add olive oil to a saucepan and heat on medium-high.
2. Add onions, garlic and mushrooms and cook down until tender.

















3. Stir in flour and cook for one minute.



4. Add Marsala until pan is deglazed.



5. Add beef stock and cook until thick and flavors are blended.



6. Serve on top of chicken breasts.

Chicken Bryan

It's no surprise that I love to eat. When I go to a restaurant, one of my all-time favorite dishes is Chicken Bryan at Carrabba's. I get this every time without fail. It is so delicious I crave it often. Simply stated it's a chicken breast covered in goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and a lemon butter sauce. I don't know why I haven't tried to recreate it before, but I made the attempt tonight and it was wonderful! For about the cost of one serving at the restaurant I was able to feed my entire family of four and it was every bit as good as the restaurant version. Surprisingly, this was super easy to make as well and didn't require much prep work. The recipe below is a combination of several I found online and a few of my own tweaks and feeds 4. Enjoy!

HELPFUL HINTS

1. The sauce should not be made too far in advance or it will begin to separate. Make it right before you're ready to serve.

2. I don't have alcohol in our home so I typically use cooking wine and for this recipe it substituted just fine.
3. You can buy the sun-dried tomatoes already julienned although sometimes they come in a jar or can packaged in oil. Since you don't want that extra flavoring, you can rinse them in hot water and then pat them dry.

INGREDIENTS

Basil Lemon Butter Sauce

1/2 cup butter

2 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp lemon juice

1 Tbs white wine

1/8 tsp salt

1/8 tsp white pepper

1/3 cup heavy cream

8 basil leaves, sliced

Chicken and Assembly

4 skinless chicken breasts

Vegetable oil

Salt

Freshly cracked black pepper

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, julienned

4 slabs of Goat cheese

DIRECTIONS

Basil Lemon Butter Sauce

1. Melt butter in small saucepan over low heat.

2. Add garlic and sauté for 5 minutes.

3. Add the lemon juice and wine and cook another 5 minutes.

4. Add salt, pepper and cream and reduce heat to low.

5. Cook for 15 minutes over low heat until thick, stirring often.

Chicken

1. Preheat a barbecue grill to high.

2. Use a kitchen mallet to flatten the thick part of the breasts so they will cook evenly.

3. Rub each breast with oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

4. Grill for 3-5 minutes per side or until done.

Assembly

1. When the chicken is done, place each breast on a plate.

2. Place a slice of cheese and then a pile of sun-dried tomatoes on top of each chicken breast.

3. Stir the sliced basil leaves into the sauce.

4. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve.

Caramelized Apple Stuffed Chicken Breast with Fontina and Cranberries

This wonderful recipe comes courtesy of Food Network with only a few of my own modifications. The chicken was perfectly moist thanks to the delicious marinade, and the stuffing combined the nuttiness of fontina cheese, the tang of dried cranberries, and the sweetness of caramelized apples. A perfect combination! The recipe below yields 8 servings. Enjoy!

HELPFUL HINTS
1. This is a great dish for dinner parties as the chicken breasts can be grilled and stuffed and then refrigerated up to 24 hours in advance.
2. Try to find chicken breasts that are thicker in the middle, giving you plenty of room for your stuffing.
3. I would recommend some sort of accompanying sauce. In the pictures below I made a cranberry wine sauce using 3 cups white wine, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup dried cranberries and 1 Tbs dijon mustard, brought to a boil then simmered for several hours.

INGREDIENTS
Marinade
4 Tbs red wine vinegar
6 Tbs apple cider vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp dry mustard
4 tsp honey
5/6 cup olive oil

Chicken and Stuffing
8 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium Fuji apples
1 Tbs unsalted butter
4 oz fontina cheese, shredded
4 oz dried cranberries

DIRECTIONS
Marinade
1. Place the red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, the mustards and honey in a food processor.

















2. Turn it on and drizzle in the olive oil until fully incorporated / emulsified.

















3. Marinade the chicken breasts overnight in this mixture.

















Prep
1. Preheat grill to high.
2. Remove chicken breasts from the marinade and transfer to a plate.
3. Season them with salt and pepper.
4. Mark the chicken breasts by grilling them only long enough to make grill marks and then rotating them about 45 degrees to make crosshatch marks. Do this on one side only. The chicken breasts should still be completely raw inside.





























5. Hold breasts in the refrigerator until ready to stuff.

Stuffing
1. Peel, core, and very roughly chop the apples.
2. Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium high heat and add the apples.
3. Cook the apples for roughly 5 to 10 minutes or until they are deeply browned.

















4. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl.
5. Add the fontina and cranberries and mix.

















6. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Chicken
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut a slit in the thicker side of the chicken breast about 1 inch wide, creating a pocket almost as large as the breast itself.

















3. Stuff the breasts with the apple stuffing mix, cramming in as much as possible without ripping the breast.
















4. At this point the breasts are ready to bake and can either be held in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours or baked right away.
5. When ready to bake, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until an instant read thermometer registers 155 degrees in the thickest part of the breast.

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie is one of our favorite comfort foods and this recipe, originally found on allrecipes.com, hit the spot. I made a few modifications to the ingredients and I also made fresh pie crust instead of pre-packaged as it doesn't take that long and the quality is much better. The recipe below yields one large pie that feeds about 6. Enjoy!

HELPFUL HINTS
1. The edges of the crust have a tendency to cook faster than the top of the pie. As soon as you see the crusts browning, cover them with tin foil so they don't burn while the rest of the pie bakes.

INGREDIENTS

Pie Crust

1 cup butter cubed and chilled
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
8 to 10 Tbs ice water

Pot Pie

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, cubed

1 cup carrots, sliced

1 cup green peas, frozen

1/2 cup celery, slized

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup onion, shopped

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 3/4 cups chicken broth

2/3 cup milk

DIRECTIONS

Pie Crust
1. Put the butter, flour, and salt in the food processor, and pulse lightly just until the mixture resembles wet sand.
































2. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, pulsing briefly after each spoonful of water. Keep adding water until the dough just begins to gather into larger clumps.

















3. Transfer equal amounts of the dough into 2 resealable plastic bags and pat each into a disk. Let rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

















4. Remove 1 of the disks from the bag to a flour coated surface. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to a 10-inch round.

















5. Gently fit the rolled dough into a 9-inch pie pan, and refrigerate while you prepare the pie filling.


















Pot Pie
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery.
3. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside.

4. In a separate saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent.

















5. Stir in flour, salt and pepper.

















6. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk.

















7. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.

8. Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust.

















9. Pour hot liquid mixture over the chicken mixture.
































10. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.















































11. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.