365 Extras: Chicken Marsala

In my quest to learn to cook this year, I've taken a photo each week of myself cooking... But because that project is all about the portrait, I never take actual cooking shots, even though I often think about it... I usually decide it's not worth the effort haha! But I've decided to start doing some of that because it's fun and gives another perspective to what I'm doing =) So I took another stab at making Chicken Marsala last night, which I made before straight from a recipe in a cookbook, this time around I used one of these little spice packets that has most of what you need for the recipe as well as instructions! They're fabulous! Still takes some cooking skills though, but it's so much simpler than having to measure loads of spices out =P

 

Every time I make a pan-cooked chicken dish I wind up burning the chicken trying to get it to cook through, so this time I would cut the chicken breasts into thin fillets before coating them so they wouldn't burn, then into the flour and spice mixture! 

It didn't hurt that the recipe also called for me to basically deep fry the chicken in butter and olive oil... I think it  said to use like 2 or 3 tablespoons of each! So between that and the thin cuts of chicken, I managed not to burn the chicken, so then it was on to the marsala sauce! I could eat sauteed mushrooms by themselves if you told me to, so any recipe that has a sauce with mushrooms, I'm so there! Lately I've been buying these chopped 'baby bella' mushrooms, they're bigger than normal white mushrooms and have a little more substance, especially when you cook them down...

As for the finished dish, I wasn't all that happy with the spice mix and sauce... It was ok, but not great... I expect a little more from a dish I really didn't have that much room for error on =P Granted, the sauce was totally my fault, I just used regular wine instead of Marsala lol! The chicken I blame on the recipe though, can't quite put my finger on it, but it just wasn't fantastic... but totally edible, and that's what matters hehe!