Almost Italian

Rarely has our Tweet-o-Meter registered such disbelief at collective culinary ignorance as it did yesterday. We were waiting to learn what new powers of connectivity and photographic clarity Apple’s latest iPad would offer food bloggers, and so we were thrown off-guard when the really “big news” broke…

After two months on the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told reporters following him that he was looking forward to being back in Boston where he hoped to tuck into “a home-cooked dinner of Chicken Marsala.”

In what seemed to be another two-Cadillac moment, the airwaves and Internet immediately lit up with a meteor-shower of jibes and snickers. More remarks about Romney’s being “out of touch,” his ” Euro-snobbism”… and jokes about whether or not Mormons were allowed to eat dishes cooked in wine ricocheted through the Twittersphere.

“How can a Mormon use alcohol?” “Doesn’t cooking with wine* violate tenets of the Mormon church?” queried more than one Twitterer.

“Was there decaf tiramisù for dessert?” wondered another.

Still another Twitterer accused the one-time Mormon missionary to France of eating “elitist Euro-food.” While one wag writing for the The Guardian UK pondered the possibility that the dish might actually be Chicken Tikka Masala.

Available at Walmart

And adding to all this noise, Italian-American food fans were seizing the opportunity to tout Chicken Marsala as a wonderful “Old World Italian classic.” Regardless of our readers’ political persuasions, we feel that both the former Governor of Massachusetts and chicken have been wrongly characterized. We want to set the record straight:

The majority of those millions of Italian immigrants who passed through the turnstiles at Ellis Island arrived hungry. The “old world classics” they knew best were foraged weeds, beans, and bread.

With the usual American substitution of pounded, boneless chicken breasts for veal scallopine, Chicken Marsala is as AlmostItalian as anything on the Sopranos’ table. In other words, it’s as American as Spaghetti with Meatballs. So, beh, fuggedabboudit and just cook this!

Chicken Marsala

Ingredients:

4 boneless chicken breasts
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound white button mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup Marsala wine
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Place the chicken breasts between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and pound them with a meat mallet or a rolling pin until they’ve reached a uniform thickness of approximately 3/8 inch. Season the breasts on both sides with salt & pepper and reserve them on a plate.

Pour the flour into a shallow-sided dish and season with salt & pepper. Dredge the chicken breasts in the flour, shake off the excess, and reserve the breasts on a plate.

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat, then add the butter. When the butter has foamed and the bubbles have begun to subside, add the mushrooms. Cook until they have released their liquid and are lightly browned, approximately 8 – 10 minutes. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and reserve.

Add the oil to the pan and raise the heat to medium-high. Sauté the chicken breasts for approximately 2 – 3 minutes per side, or until the edges begin to turn white. Remove the breasts from the pan, reserve on a clean platter, and cover them loosely with aluminum foil.

Add the Marsala to the pan and raise the heat to high. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to dislodge any bits of caramelized chicken. Boil for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol, then lower the heat to medium. Simmer the sauce until slightly reduced, then add the reserved mushrooms. Taste for seasoning, adding salt & pepper as needed.

Return the chicken breasts to the pan and simmer for 2 – 3 minutes, basting them with the mushroom sauce.

To Serve:

Place 1 chicken breast on each of 4 dinner plates. Spoon some of the sauce over each portion and garnish with the chopped parsley.

Serves 4.