Chicken Parmigiana

On Monday night, I was watching Hell's Kitchen and the challenge involved making Chicken Parmigiana.  It looked good.  Really good.

I have made Mario Batali's chicken parm from scratch.  It involved making a tomato sauce that included carrots and three kinds of fresh herbs, butterflying and tenderizing chicken breasts and a host of expensive ingredients.

I wanted chicken parmigiana.  I did not want a Mario Batali or Gordon Ramsey experience.  Here's what happened next.

Ingredients

Flattened chicken breasts, spaghetti, panko, flour, an egg, parmesan cheese (shredded), provolone cheese (sliced, leftover from Philly cheesesteak experiment) and Trader Joe's marinara sauce.

First step:  wine selection.

I took a risk on an Italian wine instead of Cabernet Sauvignon from the USA or Australia.  I will not be buying the 2010 Mandrarossa Nero d'Avola again.  I should just stick to what I like.

Second step... make a breading station:

From left to right:  flour+salt+pepper, beaten egg, panko.

Once the flattened chicken breasts were floured, egged and breaded, they looked like this:

I then choose canola oil to fry in and heated it in a non-stick skillet.  I had olive oil, but it seems to set off the smoke alarm.  I fried two of the pieces of chicken at a time.  Look at the delicious crunchiness!  I love Panko.

While that happened, I lined a baking sheet with foil and decided to use a wire cooling wrack on top of the baking sheet so that everything would stay nice and crispy.  Once the chicken was browned, it was time to add cheese.  

(one slice of folded provolone, one sprinkle of shredded parmesan) 

I refused to pay $2.50 USD for a tiny bag of croutons today.  Keep in mind, most bottles of wine, by comparison, cost about $6.99.  That's for the good stuff.  This purchase refusal resulted in me making les croutons (aka, I chopped white bread and baked it with olive oil and salt) for the caesar salad while I baked the chicken, boiled the pasta and heated the cheater marinara sauce.  TADA.  This means that out of the whole meal, the chicken portions and the croutons in the salad were homemade.  I rule.  

Final presentation:

(ooh, what an artistically fallen tomato chunk)

Our table tonight: