Chicken Marsala

I love chicken marsala ever since I found this recipe on Italianfoodforever.com

I have to admit, I am not one to order Italian food when I am out. Why? Not that it is not delicious. However, I find that Italian cooking is relatively easy to replicate at home that it defeats the purpose to order out. Plus I do not appreciate capers. It will take me a little while to get used to capers. For now, I would prefer making Italian food at home as I can omit capers in everything. Just as long as you find a recipe from a good trusted site or great chefs like Lidia Bastianich, Mario or someone's Italian grandmother or aunt. The latter will be a great source of family's hand me down recipe.

Trust me when I say this is the best Chicken Marsala recipe I have ever tried from a food blog. It has the right taste and enough mushrooms in the dish to satisfy the mushroom fanatics in you. To call this dish simple is inept. It is extremely easy to prepare but the depth of flavor in this dish will make your family thinks you have been laboring over the stove for hours.

One of the key ingredients in the dish is porcini mushrooms. In this case, dried is better than fresh. Dried porcini has a more robust taste to it, thanks to the dehydration. You can buy the dried porcini from your local grocery store. If you live in Malaysia, your best bet will be to look for it at Cold Storage or Hock Choon in Jalan Ampang.
Choosing the right marsala wine for the dish is another important aspect of getting this dish right. Make a friend out of your local wine store owner. He will tell you which brand he thinks is the best for the dish. My local friendly wine store owner swore by Pastene Marsala Wine. It is cheaper compared to other brands and he said it tasted just as good in making Chicken Marsala. He was dead on. The dish came out great.


Chicken Marsala (Adapted from Italian Food Forever )

Ingredients
3 lb of chicken (you can use either boneless breast or bone-in chicken pieces, like I do)
8 oz white button mushrooms, sliced (if you can't find fresh, canned button mushrooms is fine)
1 oz dried porcini, rehydrate and chopped (you can try using shitake mushrooms for this but the flavor will be different)
Flour for dredging
1 clove garlic, chopped
salt and pepper
4 Tbsp olive oil
2/3 cup Marsala Wine
1/4 cup water (from soaking the porcini mushrooms)
1 Tbsp butter
Small amount of chopped fresh parsley

Directions

Step 1: Dredge chicken pieces in flour. Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a pan over medium low heat and sear till golden brown about 3 minutes per side.

Step 2: Dish chicken out onto a plate. Clean the pan if there are too much burnt flour particles in the oil.

Step 3: Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan. Stir in mushrooms. Sprinkle a dash of salt to help extract water out of the mushrooms. Saute till golden brown.

Step 4: Add in the garlic. Let cook till garlic is slightly golden in color.

Step 5: Add in marsala wine and porcini liquid into pan. Return chicken pieces into the pan.

Step 6: Bring chicken and sauce to a boil. Cover pan and let cook for another 20 minutes over medium heat.

Step 7: Stir in parsley and butter. Serve with pasta of choice or rice and corn. If sauce needs to be thickened, combined leftover flour from earlier with the remainder of porcini liquid. Dish out chicken pieces onto a large serving plate prior. Add one tablespoon of the flour mix at a time, stir and let sauce come up to a boil. Thicken to the desired consistency.



Note: I usually double the amount of marsala wine and porcini liquid as my family loves the marsala sauce with rice.