weekend extravaganza - stuffed chicken

For much of this weekend, I was alone at home trying to keep sane and pass time. I'm not going to lie. I like school. I like learning about disease states, how to diagnose (even though I'll probably never have to know any of the diagnoses), what drugs do to you and most of all making the people I care about happy.

On Saturday, I made dumplings with my mom and it was my first time at forming them into their famous shapes. Maybe it's because it was my first time but lets just say they didn't look too pretty. I think I got the hang of it now though...we'll have round 2 sometime in the near future.

For dinner tonight, I had to get creative because there was absolutely nothing to eat...or was there? Stuffed Chicken w/ Marsala Sauce

Ingredients:
- Chicken breast
- Bacon
- Parsley
- Thyme
- Bread crumbs
- Egg
- Sausage meat
- Marsala wine
- Sherry wine
- Chicken stock

1) Butterfly the chicken breast.

2) Mix bread crumbs, 1 egg, parsley, thyme (I used dry but use fresh if possible), sausage meat. The amount you use will vary but use a 1:1 ratio of bread crumbs to sausage meat. It's hard to determine how much parsley I used...maybe about 1/4 cup or so. I used a teaspoon of dry thyme but use more if you're using fresh.

3) Place the stuffing mixture in the center of the butterflied chicken breast and roll/fold the chicken breast to cover the stuffing mixture.

4) Get an aluminum foil and season w/ salt, pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Lay bacon strips over the seasoning, enough to cover the length of the stuffed chicken.

5) Roll the aluminum foil causing the bacon to cover the stuffed chicken breast and squeeze in the ends to prevent water from getting in.


6) In a hot pot w/ boiling water, poach the stuffed chicken for 25 - 30 minutes.

7) Remove from poaching and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

8) Take the stuffed chicken out of the fridge and in a hot pan, crisp up the bacon nicely rolling it from side to side. Now here's the kicker, you'll probably need a little olive oil to get things going but do not over oil the pan. Some of the fat on the bacon will render off when cooking and you don't want too much oil the pan because we'll be making our sauce in the same pan later.

9) When nice and crispy on all sides, remove chicken breast from the pan and let it rest. Get out some Sherry wine and deglaze the pan. After the Sherry has deglazed, add Marsala wine and deglaze once more.

10) Add in chicken stock (eh...3/4 to 1 cup) and reduce until desired consistency.