Chicken Milano

So tonight I decided to make a favorite from way back, pre kids.  When Ernie and I  first moved into our apartment we both worked a lot.  I worked at UMCP and he was framing homes with JSquare.  GOOD TIMES!  We were super excited about having our own space and kitchen.   Anyway, I had been collecting TONS of recipes (actually signed up to receive them) from Easy Everyday Cooking.  Have you heard of it??? These pictured recipe cards are fantastic.  They have like 18 food categories with 50+ recipes in each one.  The ideas are endless.  In addition to loving the pictures (so I could actually see what it should look like) they give suggestions on what to serve with it.  SCORE! 

My husband has never been one to try things but me being a newly married wife wanted to make something he would just love.  This is one of the first of many my, use to be picky husband, absolutely loves.

Chicken Milano

Ingredients:

6 Chicken Breast

1/2c All-Purpose Flour

2 Eggs

1c Italian Bread Crumbs

1/2c Butter or Margarine 

1c Marinara Sauce (I used Ragu Marinara Sauce it was on sale @ Giant)

1c Half-and-Half

1/2c Mozzarella Cheese

1/2c Swiss Cheese

1/4c Parmesan Cheese (grated)

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350.  Roll each chicken breast in flour; dip in beaten egg.  Roll in breach crumbs to coat well.

2.  Heat butter in large skillet over medium-high heat; add chicken pieces.  Cook until browned on all sides, about 10 minutes.

3.  Mix marinara sauce and half-and-half in a small bowl, reserving 2 tbsp.  Pour into baking dish.  Arrange chicken in prepared dish.

4.  Mix mozzarella, Swiss and Parmesan cheeses in a small bowl.  Sprinkle over chicken.  Top with reserved sauce.  Bake, loosely covered, until cooked through, about 30 minutes.

Extras: (with a few reviews thrown in)
We have gone back to buying all of our meats in bulk.  Mostly from BJ's but occasionally from places such as Nicks or Giant.  I used 2 packs of the thin sliced purdue chicken breast.  Each contain 4 to 6 slices of chicken so we had 9 for this dinner.  Seems like a ton for just the four of us but it's always good to have leftovers for Ernie to take to work for lunches or for those unexpected guest.

I began making this fantastic meal a few minutes before the boys came home from school.  It is always neat to hear the dinner guesses as soon as they walk through the door.  I've heard (among many others) the following: "OH NO Mom, are we having chicken again?", "I already ate at school", "Why do you always have to make that?" and my favorite, "Can't we just have chicken nuggets?".  Tonight they said it smelled like something good.  Yay!!! 

Onto the prep...  I decided to make a little extra sauce for the meal so I used the remaining marinara sauce and half-and-half and put it on the back burner to heat up.  I made Rigatoni Pasta to serve as a side and when it was done put it in my pasta bowl with some of the sauce and sprinkled some shredded Parmesan cheese on it.  YUMMO.  I then sliced 6 slices from the Olive Oil Cibatta loaf I had bought, spread some of the garlic butter mix you can get from Giant on it and baked it.  I had more than half a loaf left so I just threw that in the freezer. 

When everything was finally on the table I started hearing comments about the rigatoni.  It isn't the normal pasta we use.  In our house the boys think that there is just macaroni and cheese and spaghetti (which I actually very rarely use we prefer angel hair pasta) so to change it up was a risk.  To my surprise there wasn't any EWWWW or I don't like that.  No my little men made a game out of it.  They counted their noodles and made patterns between that and chicken.  It was cool. 

This meal was a hit and was a first for my little guys.  They like their daddy loved it very much and I hope you do too!!!