Chicken Parmesan

I love the smell of Italian food cooking. The garlic, onions and tomato sauce...it builds the appetite even more! Every December, there is a Township employee lunch and it's a feast of Italian food. The chicken parmesan is so incredibly good that I always go back for seconds (hey, it's encouraged!). Tonight was the first time I've ever made my own and it was so good!

What You Need:

• chicken - 2-3 chicken breast strips
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup of milk
• cracker meal (or bread crumbs)
• mozzarella cheese
• spaghetti sauce
• olive oil
  

What You Do:

• Trim the chicken if necessary.
• Combine the beaten egg and milk in a shallow dish big enough to dip the chicken in. In a separate dish, pour enough cracker meal (or bread crumbs) to coat the chicken.
• In a medium frying pan, pour enough olive oil to spread over the bottom of the pan, and turn on low heat.
  
• Dip the chicken in the egg & milk mixture (be sure to get both sides) and then into the cracker meal.
  
• Put the coated chicken breast strips in the pan and lightly brown on both sides.
  
• After the chicken has been browned, transfer it to a baking dish for the oven. Add a layer of mozzarella cheese on top of the chicken, then spaghetti sauce and a top layer of mozzarella cheese.
• Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes at 375 degrees or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. For the last 10 minutes, I moved the dish to the bottom rack to be closer to the heat (I have a gas oven). After turning the oven off, I opened the door and let the dish stay in there for a few more minutes to start cooling, so it was the perfect temperature to eat right away when I took it out.
  

To make the recipe even better, I made my own spaghetti sauce a couple of nights ago (okay, okay...I enhanced somebody else's). To do this, I minced 2 cloves of garlic, 2 slices of white onion and about 1/4 of a green bell pepper and sauteed in olive oil. Then I added 1 can of organic tomato sauce and 1 can of diced organic tomatoes and cooked. Yum!