Chicken and Mushrooms with Red Wine Sauce

Being 30 weeks pregnant, I have been really tired most nights and not cooking much. Brent and I decided to cook our Sunday dinner together so it would be more fun for me. We started with a recipe for one of Brent's favorite recipes, Chicken Marsala. However, we wanted to put our own spin on it, and since we didn't even use Marsala wine, we definitely had to come up with a different name, but 'Chicken and Mushrooms with Cheap Cabernet Sauvignon Sauce' doesn't have quite the same sound.

I tried a new preparation technique and was pretty disappointed with the outcome. Instead of putting the pan fried chicken onto a plate and covering with tin foil, I put it on a dish in a 200 degree oven to stay warm until the sauce was finished. When the chicken came out it was incredibly dry and tough. Ugh, all that hard work :( From now on, I'll stick with the plate and tin foil trick, and add the chicken back into the finished sauce to warm it back up before serving.

B&H's Chicken and Mushrooms with Red Wine Sauce

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1/2 cup flour

Salt and Pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

6 oz bacon, cut into 1 inch squares (I wanted to use pancetta, but the $2 per ounce that Target wants for it is highway robbery)

8 oz baby portobellos

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 1/2 cups red table wine

1 cup chicken stock

lemon juice to taste

3 tbsp butter

parsley

Between two pieces of plastic wrap, pound the chicken breasts until thin. Season with salt and pepper and coat with the flour, tapping off the excess. Watch as Brent demonstrates the rolling pin thrashing technique:

Next, in a skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil until shimmering. Place the chicken in the skillet, cooking on each side until golden brown and cooked though, about 3-5 minutes per side.Once cooked, transfer chicken to a clean plate and cover with tin foil.

Lower the heat a big and add the bacon, cooking until brown and crispy. Transfer to a plate with paper towels to drain.

At this point, I decided to drain some of the grease/oil from my skillet.

Return the heat to medium high and add the mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper. Saute until brown, about ten minutes.

Add the minced garlic clove, tomato paste and bacon and cook for a few minutes. Add the wine and stock to deglaze the yummy brown bits from the pan and reduce the sauce down to a cup and a half or so. Remove from heat, add the lemon juice and any accumulated juices from the chicken. Whisk in the butter until incorporated, add the parsley and season the sauce to taste.

Serve the sauce over the chicken and serve.

I served it with pasta (which we didn't care for), but only because I didn't think about making mashed potatoes until it was too late. Brent would have preferred oven roasted potatoes, but we were already making garlic bread (see earlier post) and I was using the ill-fated 200 degree oven technique, so with only one oven, three different temperature settings would have stretched my meal-planning capabilities and nothing would have been finished at the same time. I took the easy way out, even though it wasn't as good.