For my last meal assignment, I decided to prepare the following three Italian dishes: chicken marsala, eggplant parmesan, and a caprese salad. I have added the links below.
For most of these dishes, I already had many of the spices and pantry ingredients required; however, I did purchase the rest of my needed ingredients from Cub Foods. For the cost of all of the ingredients, I spent around $50.00 for the meat, produce, and dairy products that I would need. I thought this was a relatively fair prices since these three meals have fed me for over a week at this point in leftovers. Looking back, this was a relatively complete meal since there was a good source of protein in the chicken breast. Additionally, the eggplant parmesan and caprese salad added a good amount of produce to the meal to balance it out. Additionally, I tried to limit the amount of butter I used in my dishes; rather, I focused on incorporating olive or canola oil when available to substitute. However, I did have to use heavy cream and decent amount of butter for the chicken marsala to make a thick and creamy sauce.
To begin, I started off with making the simplest dish, the caprese salad. To make this dish, I simply halved some cherry tomatoes and tossed them together with mozzarella balls. I then made a vinaigrette topping using extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar to drizzle over the top.
I then prepared the eggplant parmesan. To do so, I breaded eggplant slices and baked them in the oven for a good crunch. While baking the eggplants, I made a homemade marinara sauce by adding oregano, basil, garlic, shallots, salt, and pepper to crushed tomatoes and letting the sauce reduce. After the eggplant was crunchy, I layered sauce at the bottom of a glass baking dish then added eggplant and then freshly shredded mozzarella/parmesan cheese. I then baked until the cheese was golden brown.
Finally, I made the chicken marsala by pounding two chicken breasts to around a quarter inch thick and coating the chicken in a thin layer of flour. I then pan fried the chicken in a cast iron pan for around 5-6 minutes per side to get nicely browned sides.
To make the sauce for the chicken marsala, I sauteed some mushrooms and shallots in a decent amount of butter in the same pan that I cooked the chicken. I then added the marsala wine and cooked off the alcohol. I then added chicken stock, heavy cream, and fresh thyme. I let the sauce simmer for around a half hour to reduce and thicken.
After the sauce was done, I plated the chicken marsala with some buttered noodles, and all the other dishes were placed on the same plate.
Overall, this was a fantastic meal that I prepared. I personally loved the chicken marsala the most out of all three, and I will definitely be making it in the future. The eggplant parmesan was pretty good; however, it was a bit too salty for me, so I will need to remember to watch how much salt I add next time. Also, the eggplant was not cooked all the way through and was not as crunchy as I expected. So next time, I would let the eggplant cook longer in the oven before layering. The caprese salad was good, but I think the price to make this dish was not really worth it, and a regular salad would have been more filling.
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