This is how this 15 minute meal goes down:
Chicken – 30 seconds to prepare, 3 1/2 minutes to cook (using chicken breast minute steaks) Marsala Sauce – 2 minutes to prepare ingredients, 3 1/2 minutes to make by deglazing the pan White Bean Puree – 1 minute to prepare, 2 minutes to simmer, 1 minute to puree or mash Asparagus – 1 minute to microwave (shortcut: steam it wrapped in cling wrap)
Believe it, you can get this on the table in 15 minutes. And it’s made from scratch! No store bought packet mixes, no canned soup. “Marsala is my secret weapon for quick midweek meals. It’s like a stock, but with a whole lot more flavour! And it’s fine for kids to eat because the alcohol is cooked out.” The sneaky flavour shortcut in this recipe is marsala which is a fortified wine like port and sherry. Add a splash of marsala, and it’s like you added stock, honey, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce with a touch woodiness. It’s really cheap to buy, about A$10 for a 1 litre bottle, lasts for years. And you don’t need an expensive brand, just a cheap one is fine. I rummaged through the end of bin barrel at my local liquor store and managed to pick one up for $4. The other shortcut in this recipe is using chicken minute steaks, which is basically chicken breast that is sliced horizontally to make thin chicken steaks about 1cm/1/3″ thick. If you can’t find chicken minute steaks or to save on cost, you can slice your own chicken breast. Just make sure to cut it thin because then you only need to “flash fry” it so the chicken is kept as juicy as possibly (overcooked chicken breast is horribly dry).
“Overcooked chicken breast is like eating cardboard. By using minute steaks, you only need to flash fry them, keeping it moist and juicy.” This chicken is accompanied with asparagus which I microwave in cling wrap – super lazy because it saves on washing up and digging in the back of my cupboards to locate my steamer. And the last shortcut I use is making a bean puree. It is basically a substitute for mashed potato which goes fabulously with this but takes longer to make. The white bean puree is made using tinned cannellini beans and takes less than 1 minute to prepare, then you just leave it to simmer for a few minutes, then puree with a hand held blender stick or just mash it with a potato masher. I think this is a great example of a cost conscious, elegant meal that you can make really quickly from scratch just by using a few clever shortcuts: the marsala in the sauce, cannellini bean puree instead of mashed potato and using chicken minute steaks instead of full chicken breasts which take much longer to cook. Oh, and in case you’re worried about just getting marsala for this recipe, you could also have a look at this Chicken Pot Pie which also uses marsala and I’ll be sharing a Slow Cooker Chicken Marsala in the coming weeks. So it’s worth dropping by your local liquor store for a bottle! But for this recipe, you could substitute the marsala with sherry or port. If you give it a go, I’d love to hear what you think!
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