SO, on a beautiful night, my dad decided to make us a special Italian dinner. He made us chicken parmesan and a delicious caesar salad. My brother and I love our caesar salads and we always love to critique the salad. Let me tell you, this salad had all of the elements that you look for! The chicken parmesan just melted in your mouth and it had this bubbling layer of scrumptious cheese on top of the smooth tomato sauce. Just writing about it makes my mouth water! Anyway, I am probably making your mouth water too, so here is the amazing recipe which is now a family favorite.
Homemade Chicken Parmesan
Ingredients
2 28-oz cans of Crushed and Ground Tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, chopped
½ bunch of basil
1/2 cup of olive oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast
½ lb mozzarella cheese
2 eggs
bread crumbs
pepper
salt
In a saucepan, pour half the oil and bring to medium heat.
Carefully add garlic
When garlic is golden, carefully pour in tomatoes and then basil leaves.
Add a pinch of salt and stir. Bring it down to a low heat and stir occasionally for 20 minutes.
If you are a mutli-tasker you can make the chicken at the same time. If you want to take it easy, wait until sauce is cooked and then follow the next steps.
Put the chicken breasts in between two pieces of wax paper and pound them down. Use a meat tenderizer, or a rolling pin, or anything that will get out your frustrations.
Take bowls. In one, mix the two eggs. In the other, spread the bread crumbs.
Start a frying pan on medium heat and pour in other ¼ cup of oil. Enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
Take each chicken breast and, one at a time, dip in the eggs and then in the bread crumbs. Then, with care, easily place in the hot pan. When you have all four fit in snugly, let it cook to a nice, golden brown. First, about 7 minutes on one side and then about 5 minutes on the other. Be aware that the time in the pan is dependent on how much pounding you did. The less thick the breast, the less time in the pan. Make certain the chicken breast is cooked all the way through.
While you are cooking the chicken, pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees.
When the chicken is cooked through, prepare a baking dish by spooning some sauce around the bottom of the dish. Then place the four cooked breasts in the dish. Again, spoon the sauce, generously on each chicken breast. Be generous!
Then, take your mozzarella and, if its shredded, pour it on each breast. If it’s not shredded you can take think slices of the mozzarella and place them on the sauce, on the chicken.
Cook the chicken in the hot oven for 15 minutes and it will look as if you are in Little Italy in any major city in the U.S. Maybe it will look like it would in Italy, but I’ve never been there, so I don’t know.
For heartier eaters, you can serve with some linguine, using the rest of the sauce, but, for sure, this would be delicious with a Caeser Salad. Use your own recipe for now. I’ll publish my recipe in a future posting.
Buon Giorno.
