Chicken Parmigiana

These past couple of days I spent at home in San Antonio with my family celebrating Thanksgiving. Yesterday, after eating excellent food prepared by my mom for a couple of days, I decided to cook for her. She deserved a break in my humble opinion. Thanksgiving is a stressful holiday. Plus, I haven't cooked much this past month with the extensive traveling for residency interviews. So I was missing the kitchen a little in a sense. I picked out this recipe from the Pioneer Woman's website. I know this is the second recipe that I have made by her this month, but it was all I could think of to make at the last minute. Plus, I had ready access to the recipe on my iPhone at the grocery store.

Ingredients

• 4 whole (up To 6) Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, Trimmed And Pounded Flat
• ½ cups All-purpose Flour
• Salt And Pepper (to Taste)
• ½ cups Olive Oil
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 1 whole Medium Onion, Chopped
• 4 cloves Garlic, Minced
• ¾ cups Wine (white Or Red Is Fine)
• 3 cans (14.5 Oz.) Crushed Tomatoes
• 2 Tablespoons Sugar
• ¼ cubes Chopped Fresh Parsley
• 1 cup Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1 pound Thin Linguine

Instructions

1. Mix flour, salt, and pepper together on a large plate.
Dredge flattened chicken breasts in flour mixture. Set aside.

2. At this time, you can start a pot of water for your pasta. Cook linguine until al dente.

3. Heat olive oil and butter together in a large skillet over medium heat. When butter is melted and oil/butter mixture is hot, fry chicken breasts until nice and golden brown on each side, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.
Remove chicken breasts from the skillet and keep warm.

4. Without cleaning skillet, add onions and garlic and gently stir for 2 minutes. Pour in wine and scrape the bottom of the pan, getting all the flavorful bits off the bottom. Allow wine to cook down until reduced by half, about 2 minutes.
Pour in crushed tomatoes and stir to combine. Add sugar and more salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cook for 30 minutes. Toward the end of cooking time, add chopped parsley and give sauce a final stir.

5. Carefully lay chicken breasts on top of the sauce and completely cover them in grated Parmesan. Place lid on skillet and reduce heat to low. Allow to simmer until cheese is melted and chicken is thoroughly heated. Add more cheese to taste.

6. Place cooked noodles on a plate and cover with sauce. Place chicken breast on top and sprinkle with more parsley. Serve immediately.

From: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/10/chicken-parmigiana/

I served this dish with salad and bread. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. My problems with this recipe start with the fact that the directions indicate to start the pasta in the second step. If I were to do this recipe over again, I would start the chicken and sauce earlier and then start the pasta while the sauce is cooking. Second, the chicken was good, but I feel like I could do better. The chicken needs to be breaded differently somehow to give it a crisper crust. I love the wine in the red sauce. It gives the sauce a nice little zing. I used left over cab. sav. from thanksgiving. The only change to the sauce was that I added basil...I thought it needed it.