New Recipe (and a variation)

The following is a recipe from Everyday Italian on the Food Network. I've made this many many times (with my changes in parentheses). It's a wonderful dish and really easy to do. The sauce is to die for. After the recipe is the little change I made tonight.

1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, each breast cut crosswise into 3 pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil (I never measure this)
5 tablespoons butter, divided
3/4 cup chopped onion (I always use one or two shallot cloves instead....I love shallots)
1 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced (these are baby portabellas....you can cut up regular portebellas if you can't find these....i ALWAYS dice my mushrooms...not slice)
2 tablespoons minced garlic (I just use 2 cloves)
1 cup dry Marsala wine (I probably use more like 1 1/2 cups)
1 cup (8 ounces) mascarpone cheese (you can substitute cream cheese if you can't find mascarpone...but maybe only use 5 or 6 oz....cream cheese is thicker)
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves, plus whole sprigs, for garnish (I use fresh if I have it....or else just use 1 tbs of dried)
12 ounces dried fettuccine (I use linguine - I prefer the texture)

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a heavy large skillet (DO NOT USE A TEFLON SKILLET) over high heat. Add the chicken and cook just until brown, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate and cool slightly.

While the chicken cools, melt 2 tablespoons of butter to the same skillet over medium-high heat, then add the onion and saute until tender, about 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and garlic and saute until the mushrooms are tender and the juices evaporate, about 12 minutes (no way this takes 12 minutes - maybe another 5). Add the wine and simmer until it is reduced by half, about 4 minutes. Stir in the mascarpone and mustard. Cut the chicken breasts crosswise into 1/3-inch-thick slices (we just cut into bite-sized pieces at this point....I'm not really sure why you can't just do that to begin with...there must be some reason....but we do it according to the directions). Return the chicken and any accumulated juices to the skillet. Simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat until the chicken is just cooked through and the sauce thickens slightly, about 2 minutes. Stir in the chopped parsley. Season the sauce, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the fettuccine and cook until al dente, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Drain. Toss the fettuccine with 3 tablespoons of butter and season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Swirl the fettuccine onto serving plates. Spoon the chicken mixture over top. Garnish with parsley sprigs and serve.

As I said - this dish is amazing. You'll love it just as it is. But I kind of wanted a change because we eat so much pasta. I basically followed all the steps up to the pasta. Oh and I pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees. I put 2 cans of pre-cooked wild rice into a casserole dish. (Just to interrupt myself - I didn't even know you could buy pre-cooked wild rice in a can. How convenient. For this kind of recipe, it works just fine. For a recipe where you really want the strong wild rice taste, I would make the rice myself from a bag of dry stuff.) I also added a box of Uncle Ben's white and wild rice (but NOT the seasoning packet). Oops. Double back again. The rice comes in a liquid. I reserved about a 3/4 cup of this and deglazed the pan after the chicken browned. So now in my casserole I have: the browned chicken, 2 cans drained pre-cooked wild rice, box of Uncle Ben's white/wild rice, and the juice/drippings from the pan. I then sauteed the shallots, garlic, and mushrooms and added the mascarpone, mustard, and marsala. After the veggies were soft, I dumped this all in the casserole dish as well. I then stirred in probably 3/4 cup of shredded Romano cheese. I baked this all for 1/2 hour.

I really liked this. It still had that nice flavor of the original dish, but also had the change of the rice and the addition of the Romano. It seemed like maybe it was missing something crunchy. Water chesnuts? Slivered almonds? Pine nuts? Something. The guys liked it too although they said they prefer the original because you get more sauce. I can see this argument too.

Try the recipe either way - YUMMY!!