Make Room for Mushroom Chicken

Manfrengensen has really been into mushrooms lately, so I’ve been hunting recipes like Harry Potter hunts for horcruxes. The other day I came across an interesting one. The photo on Pinterest looks like this:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 3 tbsp All-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 Shallot, finely chopped
• 100 g Button mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 60 ml Dry white wine
• 300 ml Chicken broth
• 2 tbsp Sour cream
• 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp Fresh chives, chopped

1. Place chicken breast between sheets of plastic wrap and pound with a meat mallet or heavy skillet until flattened to an even thickness, about 1/2 inch. Season both sides of the chicken with a little of salt. Place 2 tablespoons flour in a shallow dish and dredge the chicken in it. Discard the excess flour.
2. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook until golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate, cover and keep warm.
3. Add remaining oil to the pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add shallots, mushrooms and cook, stirring constantly, until golden brown, 3-5 minutes. Sprinkle with the remaining flour and stir until lightly browned. Pour in white wine, and broth. Bring it to a boil, stirring often.
4. Return the chicken to the skillet, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook until heated through and no longer pink in the center, about 5 minutes. Stir in sour cream and mustard until smooth. Taste with salt and stir in chives. Serve with wholewheat pasta.

This recipe was easy to make, though the labor involved took a while. First, I sliced four chicken breasts (about 3 lbs) into thin cutlets. Then I pounded them with an OXO meat tenderizer. The recipe said to pound the chicken between sheets of plastic wrap, but I prefer wax paper. That’s just my thing, but my point is that you don’t need to use plastic to make it work.

Next I salted them on each side and dredged them through a little bit of flour. The recipe says that you only need two tablespoons of flour, but I had a few more cutlets, so I used about half a cup.

Next, I put the cutlets into my trusty electric frying pan, cooking for about four minutes per side. The recipe says you only need two teaspoons of oil, but I used about a tablespoon. I’m kind of a Rachel Ray when it comes to measurements. I eyeball more than I actually measure. Once the cutlets had cooked for a total of eight minutes,  I took them out, but beware: they are not yet ready to eat.

While those were cooking, I finely chopped up one shallot. If you’ve never worked with shallots before, they look a bit like garlic cloves, but they are more like onions. They give off those fumes that make your eyes tear, and they caramelize when you cook them just like onions do. Once the chicken had been taken out of the pan, I put in a little more olive oil. The recipe says you only need what’s left over from the original tablespoon of oil, but I was a little more liberal and used another whole tablespoon here.

I didn’t have any “leftover” flour from the original measurement, because that had been discarded, so I just took a pinch or two and threw them into the pan. After the mushrooms had browned a bit, the white wine was added. I used some old Reisling we had, which isn’t necessarily dry, but it worked. That cooked, along with the chicken broth that was added for about five minutes, so that the alcohol could burn off.

Then the chicken went back into the pan. This cooked for about three minutes on each side. And then I added the sour cream and dijon mustard. The sour cream melted quickly, but required some stirring to distribute evenly. Eventually it yielded a nice creamy sauce, to which I added chives. No extra salt was necessary because I had been rather liberal at the stage with the raw cutlets.

Overall, it was a tasty recipe. If I would tweak anything, I would say you could add a little more mustard to bring in more spicy flavor. It felt kind of weird not working with any black pepper, but once it was on the plate, the pepper wasn’t missed.  Also, I might add that because Manfrengensen (the guy I’m married to) had to drop Edison (our tween-age son) off at an extracurricular activity, the cutlets simmered for an extra ten minutes on low, which, thankfully, had no adverse effects. They were still tender and juicy when they were on the table. I wouldn’t say that it’s a good weeknight meal because of the prep, (which could also be because I chose to serve this dish with mashed potatoes, but you could do it with rice or pasta) but it was some tasty chicken.