Another Thing To Do To a Chicken....a.k.a. Chicken with Mushrooms and White Wine

This recipe was inspired by The Next Food Network Star Winner ('09) Melissa D'Arabian. After she won, I tried to find the actual recipe with no luck, so this is my recreation. She called it "chicken 4 ways" , and her concept was with this basic preparation of chicken, you could change it up by mixing up the 4 ingredients for the sauce to make a new meal every time. So having said that, you could use lemon juice, plain chicken stock, or something else in place of the wine to change the flavor. Here's my take on it. I had an overabundance of fresh mushrooms in the fridge, so I had to do something with them.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Margarine
Olive Oil
Mushrooms
Chicken Bullion Cubes- or Chicken Stock
White Wine

Clean and de-gick the chicken breasts. Give them a slight pounding to flatten them out a bit for more even cooking. In a large skillet, saute cleaned mushrooms in margarine (I like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Mediterranean Blend") until soft. Remove mushrooms from the pan and add a bit of olive oil. Take your chicken and place it in a zip top bag with about 2 TBS of flour, a bit of salt and pepper . Shake to coat.

Place chicken breasts in the hot olive oil in your skillet. Reconstitute 3 small bullion cubes to make "chicken stock" - or use the real stuff if you have it. Cook chicken breasts about 4 minutes on each side or until brown.

Reintroduce the mushrooms and about 1 cup of the chicken stock and 1 cup of white wine. I learned a long time ago don't cook with the super cheap stuff. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it! I'm not saying use the good bottle either...but make sure to choose something that you can enjoy by the glass while cooking. It does make a difference in the finished dish.

Stir the sauce while it is reducing over medium high heat. The flour from the chicken will thicken the sauce. Remove from pan and cover chicken with the mushrooms and sauce.

Tonight I served this with roasted asparagus (great easy side dish...recipe will be posted soon) and one of the Knorr fettuccine side dishes (which, quite honestly tasted like it came from a box, so I'm not sure I'll do that again!! Although adding a bit of pepper and more Parmesan cheese did help) It was easy, looked fancy, healthy and was on the table in a reasonable amount of time.