Table Talk - Chicken Parmesan

UPDATED with pictures...

The way I normally add pictures isn't working.  I ran out of time last night to do this from home so I'm doing this during lunch at work.  So I don't have time to trouble shoot the picture issue.  I'll try and fix it when I get home tonight and update this. 

I made this dish last night and ran out of time to make the tomato sauce so it's just the chicken.  Jonathan wouldn't have eaten it with tomato sauce anyway and I don't think it would be as good as leftovers with the tomato sauce on top.  I think you'd only want to do that bake step with tomato sauce if you were going to eat all of it that night.  Otherwise I'd store it separately.  Anyway...

The first step was to toast the bread crumbs. 

I let those go while I worked on the chicken.  I set a timer so I'd stir them every two minute or so.  I still got some a little dark. 

I followed the book suggestion to cut my chicken lengthwise, rather than pound it thin.  I ended up cutting in thirds, which I think led me to chicken that was too thin. 

Overall it came out a bit dry...

Next I put together my breading station. 

I had more than enough flour, egg and bread crumbs.  I think patting the chicken dry before you start really improves the results.  Look at how well the flour and seasoning stick under the egg.

The breading process went fairly quickly.  The key was using only one hand and not stopping to wash it after every piece of chicken.  I did that at first it really slowed me down.  After a couple I figured out I could just scrape my hands off over the sink and keep going.

I thought I had a few bare areas (and since I had so many crumbs left over) I sprinkled some more on top.  You can see that some ended up in the pan under the cooling rack. 

That was a mistake.  When I opened the oven after about 12 minutes it was full of smoke from the brunt breadcrumbs in the bottom.  Not a huge issues but I was surprised it didn't set off the smoke detector. 

A couple of the pieces came out a little dark but over all it turned out really well. 

I served this with a veggie/quinoa side dish I made earlier in the week.  Overall it was a very tasty meal.  Jonathan said it was his second favorite chicken!  That's impressive.  I'm definitely going to have to make this again.  I'll leave the chicken a little thicker next time and make up some tomato sauce for my serving. 

Jen was our host this week.  Check out her blog for the recipe.