Anyway, last night Mrs. Wolves handed me a new chicken parmesan recipe. Naturally, I have fixed this dish many times before, but this recipe was more complex. Still, I agreed, and the results were good. So here's how it goes:
You will need 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 2 pounds), 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt, 5 cups of bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon of oregano, 1 tablespoon of thyme, pepper to taste, flour for dredging (about 1 cup), 6 eggs, beaten; 2 tablespoons milk, about 1/4 cup vegetable oil, olive oil, marinara sauce (God help me, you have to make it -- the recipe will come later), 2/3 cups parmesan cheese, and one pound of fresh mozzarella, sliced:
So that's a lot of stuff to deal with. We'll take this one step at a time. First, gather up your chicken breasts. As it happens, the breasts I had were actually quite large. I normally have no problem with large breasts, but as it happens, these breasts might have been too big, for reasons that will become apparent later. In any event, take a breast, put it between two pieces of plastic wrap and pound it until it is evenly thin, about 1/3 inch. Yes, I am telling you to beat your meat with a hammer.
When you're done, it should look something like this:
If you did it right, it didn't hurt. Anyway, do this three more times to the other breasts. I know that's a lot of meat-beating, but trust me, it has to be done. Now put your bread crumbs in a bowl:
Then add the salt, oregano, thyme and pepper to taste, and mix it up right:
Get your flour and put it in a flat dish suitable for dredging, beat the eggs, add the milk and put the mixture in a similar dish, then line that stuff up with the bread crumbs, like so:
Dredge a chicken breast, suitably beaten, in the flour, dip it in the egg mixture, then dip it in the bread crumbs to coat. Put the breasts on a cookie sheet.
Once all of your breasts are breaded, you need to turn to the marinara sauce. You will need 3 tablespoons of olive oil, an onion, diced, 4 cloves of garlic, chopped, 2 teaspoons of oregano, 7 cups of whole, peeled canned tomatoes (2 28-ounce cans), roughly chopped, 1 tablespoon salt and pepper to taste.
Sometimes a recipe gives you tunnel vision. It wasn't until I was half-way through the sauce that I realized I could have replaced the canned tomatoes with these, jarred from my garden:
So, opportunity missed. Anyway, chop up your onion and garlic:
Sautee them in the olive oil:
Toss in the oregano, and cook that stuff on medium-high heat for about five minutes, until lightly browned. Add the tomatoes, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer, cover it and cook for 10 minutes.
If you like really chunky marinara, you're all set. I wanted mine a little smoother and ran it briefly through a food processor, so it was smoother:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, you should put about a half-inch of vegetable oil into a straight-sided skillet, heat it to about 400 degrees and cook one breast at a time for about 3 minutes per side.
Once all four are cooked, , you need to find a suitable cooking dish, large and flat, so you can put all four breasts without overlap. My breasts were so big, this was not possible. Anyway, brush some olive oil on the bottom of the pan, then put half the marinara sauce in the pan in which you intend to cook the chicken parmesan. This is probably a good time to preheat your oven to 400 F, by the way.
Put your chicken breasts in your pan, pour the other half of the sauce over the breasts, then put the mozzarella on top of that:
Yes, I skipped a couple pictures there. I'm not running a food blog here. It's just a blog with food. Get used to it. Now, put your parmesan on top of all that:
Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes, until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is browned.
Looks pretty damn good. At some point along the way, you cooked up some pasta, fixed some kind of vegetable and maybe even cooked some garlic bread. If you didn't, I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but this is really good even without all the sides:
Bon appetit.
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