Sauteed Chicken with Shallot/White Wine Sauce

The Pittsburgh Weather forecasters... well, what can I say. They all said rain on Sunday. Rain in the afternoon. Maybe not until evening. But rain. So on Sunday we abandoned our hopes of grilling for the first time this year.

It turns out we never saw any rain at our house on Sunday (well, maybe after we went to bed). So we could have grilled. At least we were able to open up the sunroom and hang out in there for the first time since last October. That was very nice & relaxing.

Sunday dinner was quick and something new. We received a cookbook in the mail a few weeks ago. We had not ordered it. Had not asked for it. It was one of those 'try it, return if you don't like, keep if you do and pay us this amount and we'll keep sending you cookbooks' deals. We REALLY dislike such deals (tactics).

But we flipped through the cookbook anyway. I copied down a recipe before we mailed the cookbook back. Is that wrong of me? Maybe. But we did have to make the effort to return the cookbook we never asked for, so I think I deserve one recipe from the book.I didn't copy down the official 'name' of the recipe, but I think it's 'Sauteed Chicken with Shallot and White Wine Sauce.' This is a very easy recipe. Cook the chicken (the recipe says to dredge in flour and saute in a pan; we did not dredge and saute; we baked our chicken). Saute a chopped shallot in vegetable oil. Add white wine and chicken broth; simmer until thickened. We added a bit of flour to the wine/broth mixture to help thicken it since we didn't dredge the chicken in flour and then saute it in the pan. Remove from heat and stir in butter, whole grain mustard, and fresh dill (we used dried and sprinkled in until it looked good).OK, maybe we added a wee bit much dill, but we love dill, and it didn't taste too dill-y when we ate it. We cut our baked chicken into cubes and added the cubes to the sauce.Eat & enjoy!

We really liked this recipe, probably because we love dill. And wine! Plus it's really easy and quick to make. The addition of white wine really enhances the sauce - makes it more exciting than simply chicken broth with dill. We used real wine, not bottled cooking wine, since we had a bottle of sauvignon blanc that had been chilling in the refrigerator for a few weeks and after the not-so-great first half of the weekend we figured we deserved to unwind with some tasty wine! Plus, Pitt lost to Xavier so I needed consoling.

For side dishes, we made both white (for me) and brown (for SP) rices plus steamed broccoli.

It felt soooo nice to have a healthy meal after the horrible meals we ate at the end of last week and on Saturday!!!
Recipe:
1/2 cup flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1.5 lbs)
2 T vegetable oil
1 shallot
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine
3 T unsalted butter
2 T chopped fresh dill
1 T whole grain mustard

Dredge chicken in flour. Heat 1 T oil in skillet. Add chicken and cook until golden brown. Transfer to plate and tent with foil. Add the other 1 T oil to the skillet. Add shallot and cook shallot until soft, about 1 minute. Stir in broth & wine. Simmer until slightly thickened, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in butter, dill, and mustard. Season with salt & pepper. Spoon sauce over chicken. Serve.