Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala! What more needs to be said?? My husband and I love Chicken Marsala, and order it frequently when we are out. Because of this, I was a little bit nervous about making it at home, thinking that it could never taste as good at home as it did when it was made by a chef in a restaurant. I was wrong. This Chicken Marsala was so good, and more amazingly, so easy to make!! If you like this dish even a little bit, you must try to make it at home! Again, I am making 100 recipes out of the Joy of Cooking (93 more to go), but if you look there for the recipe, you will not find it. I actually used the Veal Marsala recipe, and substituted chicken instead. This recipe calls for chicken that is pan-fried (in a couple tablespoons of olive oil/butter), but I didn't have to bread it like I did for the Chicken Parm that I made last week. I just dipped it in flour (with a little salt and pepper) and fried it. I have started to dry the chicken before breading or dredging or whatever the recipe may call for, and I think that it really helps. The flour/breading stays on better, and it also browns much better. After cooking the chicken, you put sliced mushrooms in the pan and cook for a few minutes (the book says to use the leftover oil, but I had to add some butter because there wasn't enough left in the pan for the mushrooms). Once the mushrooms are browned, Marsala is added to deglaze the pan, and is cooked down to about half of the original amount added. 2T of butter is added to this, the chicken is put back in the pan to warm, and viola - Chicken Marsala! The recipe called for 2/3 cups of Marsala, but since we had guests, I doubled that. Next time I will probably use the entire bottle because I like to have some extra sauce for everyone's plate. About buying Marsala... I don't know if anyone even reads this, or if you do, if you have ever bought Marsala wine. I hadn't, so I went to a local grocery store with a rather large wine section and asked the man in that section for some Marsala wine. He guessed right off that I was making Chicken Marsala and took me to what he described as "the best Marsala - more expensive than the others, but what you want for your Marsala." He told me that it was a sweeter wine, and one that he would use to make the recipe himself, so I took it, thanked him, and went to make my purchase. I felt like too much of a tool to say, "is there anything cheaper (or bigger) that would work?" I will just look myself next time to try and judge if there is anything else I can use. The wine that I bought was Florio fine Marsala. The bottle holds half what a regular wine bottle will hold, and cost about $7.50. That doesn't seem like a lot, but when you think that I used 1 1/3 cup of Marsala, and that was almost the entire bottle, you realize that for the sauce alone, the cost was almost $7.00. It was very tasty - many compliments, but I can't make it very often at that price, so I will check it out and see if I can find something less expensive next time. I didn't take any more pictures, but we also had angel hair pasta with browned butter and Mizithra cheese on the side, which was also excellent (not in the Joy of Cooking, however).