Chicken Marsala

This is one of my favorite chicken dishes, and one I make often, it seems we never tire of it. It’s quick enough to whip up on a weeknight, and always a hit when served to dinner guests. So if you need a dish that looks like you've been slaving in a hot kitchen all afternoon, give this a try-- it's just wonderful.

The best part for me is the mushrooms - they absorb all the flavor from the marsala wine and delicately rich sauce. I served this with Jamie Oliver's recipe for chilled roasted vegetable farro salad. The salad was very flavorful, but I couldn't get past the coldness - so I warmed it up a bit before serving.

If you don't have any Marsala wine on hand, and need to pick some up, just be certain of two things -- You don’t need anything too expensive, and make sure it’s just regular dry Marsala wine, and not Sweet Marsala, a desert wine, and too sweet for this dish. This same recipe can also be made the with veal cutlets with very nice results.



Chicken Marsala

1/4 cup flour
4 boned & skinless chicken breast, pounded flat-- cut into medalians
sea salt and white pepper
1 TBLS butter
2 TBLS olive oil
2 oz of dry Marsala wine
3/4 cup mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup chicken stock
juice of half a fresh lemon
1 TBLS fresh parsley, minced

Season the flour with salt and pepper. Lightly dredge the chicken medalians with seasoned flour. Heat the olive oil and butter in a medium size skillet. Place the chicken pieces in the pan and brown on both sides. Once browned remove from pan and set aside.

Add the Marsala wine to your pan and gently bring it to a boil. Add the chicken broth, lemon juice and stir in the sliced mushrooms. Lower the heat and cook for about 10 minutes reducing the sauce. Return the cooked chicken medalians to the pan and spoon over the Marsala sauce. Cook for five minutes more on each side until warmed through. Sprinkle on some fresh parsley and serve with roasted vegetable farro salad or over linguini or pasta of choice Enjoy!

Wild Blueberry Cobbler

High bush blueberry season has gone by. Peach season is flourishing and now our wild blueberries are turning up on most of the northern routes. We are simply wild about Maine wild blueberries. There's something so special about these gorgeous berries that clearly sets them apart from any other crop. Add to that their status as nature's number one antioxidant, their incredible nutritional value, and their ability to help in the prevention of cancer. Pretty impressive yes? But for us, even moreso, is the fact that 90 percent of the wild blueberry crops harvested each year in the USA comes from our home state of Maine. And because our wild blueberries have become so popular, this adds up to approximately 30 million pounds of blueberries a year. Even more impressive!

Wild blueberries aren't planted as high bush berries. Rather, the fields and barrens where they thrive here in our pinetree state, are carefully managed to encourage the plants to grow in a healthy sustainable fashion. Many suggest that our acidic soil and harsh winters that prevail here in Maine, where the land is wild and generally inaccessible, where the winter temperatures can dip down as low as -30 and the ground too acidic for most plants to thrive, all may be part of the reason that they are so rich in the natural chemicals that provide the health benefits associated with the fruit. Wild blueberries aren't farmed in the traditional way, the bushes simply grow where nature takes them -- and up north they are even still picked in a traditional way as well, by hand. Whatever the reason is, we think they are simply the berries!

Last week we went up to Machias and Blue Hill area of Maine and then down to Booth Bay Harbor, ending up in Pemaquid Point. You can always tell it's August in our neck of the woods -- you can smell the berries in the air. Blueberry farms galore! Along the roadsides you'll find literally hundreds of vendors selling fresh berries. We stopped by one and I picked up a bushel basket to freeze for winter baking along with morning cereals. The nicest thing about these delicious morsels is that wild blueberries, as opposed to highbush berries never lose any of their punch. All that healthy goodness remains in the berries as though you were eating freshly picked.
So the next time you are pouring your morning cereal into a bowl, be sure to add a handful of our naturally healthy and so so scrumptious wild blueberries. Or add some to your favorite blueberry cobbler. Here's a family recipe that's been around longer than I can recall -- my Grandma's Wild Blueberry Cobbler.



Grandma's Wild Blueberry Cobbler

Mix together:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 egg

Stir in 1/2 cup whole milk

Sift together:
2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

2 cups wild blueberries -- washed & drained
sugar, cinnamon powder, flour

Gently mix with egg mixture. Set aside 1/3 batter to use as topping. Spread the batter into a greased and floured 9 inch square baking dish. Fold in 2 cups washed & drained wild blueberries that have been tossed with sugar, cinnamon and 2 TBLS of flour. Dot blueberry layer with four pads of butter and scoop remaining reserved batter in pieces and sprinkle the top. Dust the top with 1/4 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon. Bake cobbler 35-40 minutes in a 350 degree oven until browned on top and blueberries just beginning to burst open. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream. Enjoy!

Pemaquid Lighthouse