"In a cream sauce, it's a tasty little fowl. . . "

Remember my rhapsodizing over cream sauces? Well, it might not be a cream sauce, but it got pretty darn close. AND it included wine, one of my very favorite things.

First off, I have been bitten by the cooking bug, though I still can't find the patience in me to actually follow a recipe. I even bought The Joy of Cooking, mostly because I figured I needed to work my way up to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I and II. Still, I decided to take some inspiration by a recipe I'm sure is in there somewhere, with a lovely concoction I'll call Chardonnay-Mushroom Chicken.

It was simple, and of course required me to drink Chardonnay. All I did was cut up a boneless, skinless chicken breast (must mind the portion sizes, of course. . . grrr), brown 3 oz. of cut up mushrooms in 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and then make a sauce with a little pour (we'll say 1/4 cup) of chicken broth, 1 Tbsp of skim milk, 1 tsp of garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp of cornstarch. Oh, and, of course, the Chardonnay. A lovely Festival '34 Chardonnay--and all I used in the sauce was about a Tbsp to a Tbsp and a half. I drank much more than I cooked with.

THEN I put the chicken, some more broth (sure, another 1/4 cup-ish), the sauce, and mushrooms in a pan, covered in foil, and baked. It turned out very nice, very moist, and quite tasty with very little salt. I think I would have used real garlic (if I had remembered), but I was so distracted with the vino that I forgot to chop any up. The sauce wasn't very think--probably needed more cornstarch.

But other than that, I didn't even really miss the cream. . . . much.