Chicken Marsala

(click image to enlarge)

I got really brave last week in honor of my husband's birthday. We had another couple over on Thursday to celebrate his birthday (and the wife's birthday of the other couple). My husband is the cook in our house. Even though I love to bake, I typically leave the cooking to him. But, no one should have to labor on their birthday, so I offered to cook dinner.

I decided to make Chicken Marsala (from my mom's recipe, which is mostly in her head, so I won't post it here) because I'd helped my mom with it before and both chicken and pasta are pretty universally well liked.

Let me just say that this is probably the most complicated thing I've ever tried to cook. Normally when I volunteer to cook I make grilled cheese and tomato soup or chicken and rice (thrown in a casserole dish with a few cans of soup). This recipe required me to multi task and do a lot of prep.


Anyhow, so this is what my counter looked like after I'd cut up my peppers and thrown them in the sauce pan with some oil. I'd never worked with garlic before, so the husband came in and did that part for me.

(I can't get this photo to rotate, I'll work on that later.)
These are the peppers simmering in chicken broth- which is the step after you cook them in the garlic and oil. I definitely used too much broth, but live and learn.

Once the veggies are done (cooked until soft, but not overdone), it's time to throw the chicken in the pan (same pan as veggies) and put the pasta on. This is where I screwed up. I should have started the water to boil earlier. Instead I thought I could do it at the same time, but the small burners on our stove totally ruined that plan.


Ultimately I ended up cooking the chicken and putting it in the oven (covered with foil) to stay warm while I finished up the pasta.

The food turned out just fine, but I definitely learned a lesson about multi tasking and trying to get all the elements to come together at the same time.

For now though? I think I'll leave the cooking to my husband.