Creamy, Cheesy Goodness

We had planned on eating leftovers for dinner last night but since I eat leftovers all day (due to my bad habit of snacking), I just don't ever want them for dinner.  So instead, I decided that something with chicken would be good.  I feel like we don't eat chicken very often unless it's rotisserie since that's already cooked.  I'm always weird about cooking chicken just b/c I feel like it's almost always dry...kind of like my past fear of making pork.  However, it sounded good and I pre-planned tonight's dinner to be beef so I didn't want to do 2 days of red meat in a row.

One of our favorites is chicken marsala but since I've made that before, I thought I'd find something a little different.  I found a recipe on Food Network that was a chicken marsala with a mascarpone/dijon sauce that sounded delicious and easy to make.  The ingredients were:

chicken

mascarpone

dijon

salt

pepper

onion

mushroom

garlic

parsley

butter

marsala

To begin, I chopped up the onion, garlic, and parsley so all of my ingredients were ready to go.  I had to prepare a little more for this dinner since I was making tonight's dinner at the same time so lots going on in the kitchen.  The chicken was cut into thirds and browned in a pan with some olive oil.  Once browned, I took it out of the pan and put it in a plate and set it aside. 

Next, some butter was added to the same pan and the onions were put in it to soften a bit.  Once they were soft, the mushrooms and garlic were added and cooked for about 20 minutes until all the liquid was cooked out and the mushrooms were very soft.  I used baby bellas but you can choose a different type if you like.

While this was cooking down, I cut the chicken into thin strips.  Also, I started boiling some water b/c I decided to serve this dish wish some ravioli.  This can also be thrown on top of pasta of any type but since we just recently ate pasta, I decided to switch it up and make raviolis instead.  I bought some from  Whole Foods that I thought would be a good flavor mix with the chicken.  They cooked for about 8 minutes.

Once the mushrooms were cooked down, I added the marsala and let it cook down and reduce by half.   At this point, the mascarpone and dijon were added and mixed in until it was uniform.  I added the salt and pepper at this point too.

The chicken was then thrown into the pan and I turned the heat down and let the mixture simmer.  This cooked until the chicken was cooked through.  Make sure to turn it so the stuff on the bottom doesn't burn.  Once the chicken was no longer pink, the parsley was added and tossed.  It cooked for about 2 minutes and then the meal was done.  For timing, the ravioli went in the pot at the same time as the mascarpone and dijon.  This caused the ravioli to be done at almost the same time as the chicken so it was still hot when plated.

To finish, I put the ravioli in a bowl, topped with the chicken mix, cracked some pepper, and then topped it all with grated parmesan cheese.

SO...this was pretty delicious.  If you've ever been to Maggiano's and had a dish called Rigatoni D, this tastes pretty similar to that.  The sauce was such a great creamy, sweet, cheesy mixture of awesome.  I'm glad I chose the kind of ravioli that I did b/c I think the pesto was a good touch to the sauce.  However, I definitely think this would have been good on any kind of pasta.  When making it, I was worried that I had made it too salty but once paired with the ravioli and the chicken was added, the saltiness ended up being a great addition to the rest of the flavors.  My main regret with this dish is that I don't have any pasta leftovers to serve it with or enough leftovers in general.  Even though I was so full last night, I feel like I could've eaten at least another full bowl of this stuff just b/c it was so good.