Recipe - Chicken Maderia With Portobello

4 lg Boneless chicken breast
halves
8 ounce Portobellos; thickly cut or sliced up *
and **
1 cup Allpurpose flour
2 tablespoon Butter
2 tablespoon Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground
pepper to taste; or Chef’s
salt to taste***
1 tablespoon Fresh Italian parsley or
basil; minced
Springs of either fresh
Italian parsley or basil
One half cup Dry Madeira wine
One half cup Chicken broth

(Roberta Brisson's Copycat???)

Place chicken breasts one at a time between 2 sheets of waxed paper. Lay
the chicken pieces, with the side from which the skin was removed down, on
the waxed paper and gently flatten with a mallet. Flatten them to about
1/4inch thickness. Pounding the chicken has two purposes; 1) to make the
breast larger, and most importantly 2) is to make the thickness even so the
cooking time will be uniform.

Combine flour, salt and pepper on a clean piece of waxed paper. Coat each
chicken breast with seasoned flour; lift by one end and gently shake off
excess flour. Place each dusted piece of chicken on another piece of waxed
paper, and do not allow them to overlap each other.****

Melt 2 teaspoons butter and 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a large, deep,
nonstick skillet. When the butter and oil are hot (bubbling), add
mushrooms. Sauté on high heat until mushrooms are lightly browned and
softened, and all the liquid has evaporated. Remove mushrooms from skillet
and set aside. Season mushrooms with salt, pepper (or Chef’s Salt), and
parsley or basil. Return skillet to mediumhigh heat. Add remaining butter
and olive oil. Add chicken to skillet cooking the deskinned side first.
Sauté chicken breasts 23 minutes on each side. Do not overcook. Transfer
chicken to a large platter and cover with foil. OR You can also keep the
cooked chicken breasts in a warm oven (150200 degrees) on a large platter.

When all chicken breasts are sautéed, pour off the excess fat from the
skillet, leaving only a few drops in the pan. Pour in the wine and chicken
broth, and over medium heat, scrape the bottom of the pan, loosening all
particles adhering to the bottom and dissolving them in the liquid. OR You
can deglaze the pan in the more traditional way. Add wine to skillet and
sauté on high heat until reduced in volume by half, about 2 to 3 minutes.
Add chicken broth and sauté on high heat until reduced in volume by half,
about 1 minute.

Return the portobellos to the skillet. Taste, and adjust the seasonings, if
needed. Spoon sauce over chicken. Serve.

Serve the chicken on a platter decorated with fresh sprigs of Italian
parsley or basil, whichever herb you chose to use in the dish.

Makes 4 servings.

NOTE: *You can use any kind of fresh mushrooms. I would not mix different
mushrooms. If you use shiitake mushrooms, discard the stems.

**There are many schools of thought on cleaning mushrooms, and these are
mine: I find them dirty and feel they need to be cleaned. I gently wipe
each individual mushroom with flour sack towel or I guess you could use a
paper towel (I know, I bruising them.). If keeping the stem, I slice off
the dry looking portion on bottom end it. I never wash mushrooms. Washing
mushrooms gets them watersoaked and ruins the dish. One cookbook I have
instructs you to sprinkle flour on the surface of the water before plunging
in the mushrooms. It seems to help carry off the dirt, and perhaps also
coats the mushrooms so that they don’t get watersoaked. I have never had
any success with this method. Nor do I peel mushrooms.

*** I also make my own seasoned salt and use it instead of salt and pepper
99% of the time (recipe follows).

****Dusting the chicken with flour before sautéing can be omitted. If you
choose to omit this step, you’ll probably need to add 1 to 2 teaspoons of
flour to the fat before adding any liquid. Follow instructions for Pan
Deglazing (recipe and secrets to deglazing, recipe follows). You will also
need to season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper (or chef's
salt). Source: Roberta Brisson

Posted to recipeludigest by QueenBerta@aol.com on Feb 2, 1998