Suanie made Chicken Parmigiana, you should too

I had a terrible craving for chicken parmigiana so I made it. I would have loved to say that I made this just because I had all the ingredients at home. You know, hey these tomatoes are getting a wee ripe, I have some chicken, let me make chicken parmigiana. I wish. Being a newbie in the kitchen means that everything I cook at the moment is a result of careful, calculated planning.

I settled on a recipe by The Pioneer Woman. Love her cooking instructions 101 which come with step-by-step photos. I call it cooking for the stupid. Don’t be offended, come join the club.

I think it turned out not bad. Some things I could have done better, which means I should have been more patient. But it was okay. Ate this for 4 meals and now I’m all chicken parmigiana-ed out.

For this recipe, I used:

– 8 chicken breasts. Jaya Grocer sells them boneless and skinless. Just got to trim out the fat
– Flour enough to coat the meat, some salt and pepper
– Olive oil enough to pan fry the meat, 2 spoons of butter
– 1 onion, chopped and a few cloves garlic, minced
– Red wine. Just about 1 cup, that was the last of my opened bottle
– 8 homemade crushed tomatoes
– 1 tablespoon sugar (should have added more), some tomato paste
– English parsley (should have gotten Italian), lots of grated Parmesan, some pasta

1 – Have meat. Preferably chicken, just saying.

2 – Put them in a plastic zipped bag. Pound the s*** out of them or just enough to be flat. Does it say anything if I tell you that this was my favourite part?

3 – Mix flour + salt + pepper. Coat the flattened meat with the flour mixture. In a pan, heat up olive oil + butter. When it smokes a little, put in meat to fry about 2 mins each side.

4 – Do this for all the meat pieces, put aside for now. Try not to steal bits and pieces to eat because at this point, they actually smell and taste darn good.

1 – Using the same pan, add onions + garlic. Stir-fry for a bit. Oh the fragrance, mmmmm!

2 – Add wine. It’s all good. Allow it to reduce a bit.

3 – Add crushed tomatoes + tomato paste + sugar + black pepper. Let it cook for 1/2 hour, simmer occasionally.

4 – Add some parsley + grated Parmesan to the sauce. I don’t know why, Pioneer Woman said to do so.

1 – Very carefully put your chicken meat into the sauce. This requires some skills so it doesn’t drown.
2 – Pour loads of grated Parmesan on meat surface. Cover the lid and let it cook for a few minutes.
3 – Add parsley, and more grated Parmesan if you like.
4 – Cover the lid again for a couple minutes then it’s ready to serve!

Then serve with your pasta, yum yum! Absolutely delicious 😀

Oh by the way, I should mention that at some point, you should be cooking your pasta. I bought egg fettuccine because it tastes awesome. After I cooked it, I found out that my new bag of egg fettuccine was infested with rice weevils! @#(@*#(@)*$()@*#@#&@

I quickly Googled to see if rice weevils would kill me. They wouldn’t, so I used the fettuccine that I’d already cooked, carefully discarding the now dead rice weevils who were unfortunate enough to be boiled alive. I threw the rest of the egg fettuccine out because I didn’t want anything else in my pantry to be infested. Shame :X

Anyway after cooking this, I realised one thing: I hate curly English parsley. Yucks.