Some years back, my husband noted how infrequently one finds Chicken Marsala on an Italian restaurant's menu. He used this as a quick-sniff, something akin to his Moretti v. Peroni beer test (I forget which one is the mark of the better restaurant), to gauge the diversity of the menu, if not its quality. Then I came across an inexpensive bottle of Marsala wine (ohhh, so that's why it's called Chicken Marsala), it was enough to send me surfing for a recipe.
I came across one on allrecipes.com while I was looking for pesto chicken recipes, and saved it. I love recipes with spinach, and this one even had sundried tomatoes -- bonus.
It did require a little shopping though. The recipe called for portobello mushrooms, which I got at Trader Joes, but in my usual Mom-ADHD-fog, I also got presliced Crimini mushrooms, forgetting ("get over here!") that ("stop that!") I ("NO RUNNING!") had ("put that back!") already ("leave her alone!") gotten ("if I have to tell you one more time!") the ("ok that's ENOUGH boys!") portobello ("you go tell that lady you're sorry!") mushrooms.
In the end, presliced was the tiebreaker, and crimini it was. No harm done. The sundried tomatoes also came from TJ's, in a bag (not the kind in oil). I love sundried tomatoes, so it's significant that I thought the recipe could have used fewer of them.
By all rights, this should go over noodles, but I cheated and finally got rid of a bag of bowties I'd stashed in a packrat moment. It worked fine, actually.
I thought this was very tasty and flavorful! The marsala wine and the sundried tomatoes make it sharp and strong, a nice contrast to otherwise bland chicken. The mushrooms were really good too. I'd be interested trying this again with another mushroom variety.
The picture looks awful, but really, this was very yummy. My husband even liked it. My boys...well, they liked the pasta, but preferred the chicken that I'd wisely cooked and set aside to be free of the grownup-tasting sauce. That's actually a huge benefit to this recipe -- you can serve kids and grownups something different simply by pulling some of it out before it's done.
This has earned itself a place in my Top Ten of main entree recipes for serving at home. Easy, fast, flexible, flavorful comfort food.
Now what am I going to do with two portobello mushrooms?
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