Creamy Chicken Piccata with Bacon

Ingredients
3 Slices Pepper Bacon
3 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
White Wine (about 1 cup)
Chicken Stock (about 1 cup)
Heavy Cream (about 1 cup)
Peas (about 1/2 a bag of frozen peas, thawed)
Penne Pasta (about 1/2 a box)
Shallots (around 4)
Baby Bella Mushrooms (1 package of sliced mushrooms)
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Thyme
Parmesan Cheese
Flour

Bacon!
Bacon makes everything better, including this dish. Chop the strips of bacon up into small chunks. In a large pan, start to cook the bacon and render the fat out (medium-high heat). Once the bacon starts to brown, pull it out of the pan and set it aside. Leave the fire burning.

Pound Chicken
While the bacon is working, prep the chicken.

You want the chicken pounded thin, about 1/4″ – 3/8″. To do this, I like to dredge a little flour onto a cutting board, place the chicken on top, place a paper towel on top of the chicken, and then pound it down with the flat side of a meat tenderizer.

Once you have it to a consistent thickness, dredge flour lightly onto and salt and pepper both sides.

Crank the heat up to high and toss the chicken into the pan, ensuring that it is flat. You want as much contact with the pan as possible. If you did not get enough bacon grease, you can add a little olive oil to make it up.

Now the hard part, don’t touch it. You want to leave the chicken in the pan until it starts to brown. It should take about a minute. But because it is thin, be careful not to overcook it. Once one side is brown, flip it over and brown the other side. When both sides are brown, place the chicken on a plate and put it somewhere where it will stay warm.

Boil
Near the time you put the chicken in the pan, start boiling your water for the pasta. Once the water starts to boil, add your pasta and toss a lid on it.

Sauté
With your shallots sliced and the mushrooms cut to a manageable size, toss both into the still hot pan. Salt and pepper lightly. Again, add a little oil if needed. Saute this mixture until the shallots and the mushrooms start to soften.

Sauce
Now it is time to get all of the goodness up from the bottom of the pan. To the hot pan, add about 3/4 cup of wine. Scrape the bottom of the pan until all of the brown bits are removed. Add about 3/4 cup of chicken broth to this. Now add the heavy cream until it is near the consistency that you want (about 1/2 a cup). Add some oregano, thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Bring this to a heavy simmer.

Mix It All Together
Once the sauce starts to reduce, add the peas and the bacon that you had set aside earlier. Drain the pasta, and add it to the pan. Leave this on low heat until everything is heated.

Serve
Cut each breast of chicken into a size that can be easily served, about into thirds. Place the chicken in the bottom of a large serving dish, pour the pasta and sauce mixture over top.

Once plated, grate fresh Parmesan cheese over top and enjoy!

A note on measurements…
I don’t really measure a lot when I cook. The quantities here are really just estimates of what I added. For the sauce, the goal is to make enough so that you can really coat all the pasta inside and out and have some left over to spoon over top of the chicken. Eyeball it and adjust quantities to get the amount of sauce you need.