Chicken Marsala

Due to SP's 'Birthday Weekend' of dining out, we didn't make any time to cook meals for the week. We did buy ingredients for a meal.

We decided to have Chicken Marsala this week. Monday evening, I was in charge of making it. When we first started making this dish, we followed this recipe from Gourmet exactly; now it's more of a guideline.

First step, I sprinkled salt and pepper on several chicken breasts, placed them on a foil lined cookie sheet, and baked them at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

While the chicken was cooking, I decided to next get the pot of water on the (gas) range top (for cooking pasta). Our oven's range top has burners that look like this:Often, if a pot or kettle is not placed directly and evenly/securely over the center, it'll tip between the spaces in the 'star' shape and stuff will slosh out. We have two 'smallish' flame burners and two 'largish' flame burners. I wanted to put the pasta water on the large back one so that I could use the large front one for sauteing the onions & mushrooms.

So of course, you can guess what happened. My pot of water wasn't secure and tipped and sloshed water all over the range top. A lot of water. I had to take time to mop up the water and then try to dry the burners so they would light. They're very temperamental and usually refuse to light for a while after cleaning them or spilling something like water.

Did I mention that after I cleaned up the spilled water, the pot tipped again? And that I then had to mop up even more spilled water? Not my day, I guess.

Grrr!!!

After cleaning the two water messes, I sliced an onion and a lot of mushrooms. I'm not sure exactly how many mushrooms I sliced, but I'm sure it was a lot more than 3/4 lb. We really like mushrooms so the more sliced mushrooms, the better.I finally got the onions and mushrooms in the skillet and sauteing away. Next. I got out the pasta. We didn't have any egg noodles, which are my favorite for butter pasta, so I decided to use up the opened box of penne. I also washed and cut a bunch of fresh broccoli.

After the mushrooms and onions are nice and brown and the skillet isn't too watery, the Marsala is added. We don't have 'real' Marsala - we use a bottle of cooking Marsala.I used one and a half times the amount of Marsala (and chicken broth). When the Marsala is almost evaporated, the chicken broth is poured in and the parsley added. I used dried parsley and usually I simply sprinkle it in until it looks like a good amount, but this time I accidentally flipped opened the spoon side of the lid instead of the shake side and got quite the pile of parsley! Oops!Fortunately, once I stirred it in, it wasn't too much parsley. By this time, the chicken had been cooling for a while. I sliced it and put the slices in the mushroom-Marsala sauce.

Once the pasta was cooked, I added some butter and parsley.When SP got home, we microwaved the broccoli and then sat down to a tasty dinner.We got out some Parmesan to grate over the pasta.I like letting the mushroom-Marsala sauce mix in with the pasta and then scooping up a piece of pasta, some mushrooms, chicken, and small bite of broccoli all at the same time.

This Chicken Marsala recipe makes enough for 3 meals for us. All I've been doing is re-heating the chicken & mushroom-Marsala sauce in the oven for about 20 minutes, making some more pasta (or rice), and microwaving some frozen veggies. Yum!