It snowed for real in DC on Saturday. (Like 5 inches? Which is a lot more than usual this winter.) And since the storm was pretty well advertised (that's what the weather feels like, an inadvertent advertisement for grocery stores--BUY ALL THE FOODZ in case you're snowed in!!!!!!!!!!!!) I thought I could spend a good chunk of the evening cooking. It was nice. I also drank so many glasses of wine, which may have been the reason this dinner turned out so delicious.
First, I started by making risotto with arugula & prosciutto. (BTW: definitely am not ruling out Williams-Sonoma recipes anymore. This was a winner.) I only made 1/2 the recipe and we had so many leftovers! Maybe the ham looks a little weird wrapped around like that, but whatever, you guys! Risotto, as you may have heard, is a hands on process. It took probably 45 minutes to an hour to make. But the swell thing is there's about 20 minutes of simmering time where you don't need to pay attention, and you can get a lot of the chicken done in that time.
So ya, once I got the risotto settled & simmering in the pan, I made chicken "marsala". I'm doing quotes, because marsala is a specific sort of wine that I did NOT have the fortune of finding. I used a cheap sangiovese from Tuscany. Marsala, which can be sweet or dry and it's very hard to decipher which one is meant for this dish, is from Sicilily. I don't know if I've ever really had chicken marsala. I never order chicken in restaurants and I can't remember making it. So I didn't have a basis for comparison.
Therefore, I don't actually know if my substitute was an authentic choice. But what I'll say, and I'm saying this because I was very stressed out trying to pick the wine, is that this tasted good. Real good. Toward the end of the sauce-making, I added more flour than the recipe called for because I was impatient. I shouldn't have done that. You know why? The mix of the sauce with the risotto was delightful and since I thickened it too much, we lost out a little bit.
That mushroom sacrified itself for our dinner. It was very nice. And reminds me of Alice in Wonderland mushrooms. I was pretty sure I'd have to sacrifice on mushroom choices because I thought TJs wouldn't have the kinds the recipe called for, but they did! (Cremini & shiitake, bee tee dubz.)
By the time I served the meal, I told Michael, "I was drinking a lot while I was drinking." I meant the second drinking to be "cooking." But the point is not to say I was tipsy & dumb. The point is to say I had a lot of fun making this dish. There wasn't anything hectic about it. I was able to have a romanticized version of a long evening in the kitchen sipping wine and listening to music. Nothing was compromised, except perhaps, my weeknight second guessings. Maybe the looseness created some good eats. Or, maybe the recipes were just really good. Try it out and let me know. Just, do yourself a favor, don't have anywhere to go except the table.
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