Clari Dees Quick Chicken Parm and Veggies!

Oven-Baked Chicken Parmesan

Hello, Yankee Belle readers. Clari here, waving from the Show-Me state.

I have a confession to make.

Uhm…I am not a cook.

That doesn’t mean I can’t cook.

It means I’d…well…rather not. I also tend to forget that there are real people around that need real food. Unlike fictional people who happily exist on fictional food.

So when my mom—who is an awesome cook—found out that Ruthy had asked me to share a quick and easy recipe during Speedbo month, she did what all loving mothers would do. She laughed.

Not with me. At me.

Humph!

After I killed off a character in my manuscript for therapy, I pulled out my cookbook (I hear that snickering. Yes, I do have my own cookbook. Tiny, though it may be), and flipped through it for an easy, peasy recipe.

And here it is…dial 555-5555, and in thirty minutes you’ll have a piping hot pizza.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist. ☺

Okay, where was I?

Oh, yes. Easy recipes.

You’ve served Chicken Parmesan in the Cafe before, but this version is a bit simpler and even though I—the non-cook of the family—make it, my siblings will eat it and actually say they like it. So at the risk of being redundant, here you go.

Oven-Baked Chicken Parmesan

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves.

1 egg, slightly beaten

¾ cup Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs

1 jar Ragu Old World Style pasta sauce (or your favorite pasta sauce)

1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese (Or more. We like a lot of cheese on ours.)

Since we feed seven to eight people at our supper table, I doubled the ingredients—which is really easy with this recipe.

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Dip the chicken in the beaten egg, then in the bread crumbs, coating well.

In a glass baking dish, arrange chicken.

Bake uncovered for 20 minutes.

Pour pasta sauce over the chicken and bake an additional ten minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Top with cheese either right before it comes out of the oven or right after.

You can serve this with pasta if you prefer, but I added a favorite vegetable instead.

Steamed broccoli with lemon-butter sauce. Yum! I like green vegetables so much more since we started adding this citrusy twist.

It’s really easy, too.

Just melt 3 parts butter and 1 part lemon juice together and sprinkle in salt, pepper, and parsley flakes to taste.

(Fresh parsley tastes the best, but dried flakes work well, too.)

Pour the sauce over your steamed veggies and serve.

And presto, the non-cook presents…

It’s so easy, even I can do it.

And no taste-testers were harmed in the process.

Pshew! And now back to writing, where if someone whines about being hungry, I can shove them an imaginary bowl of porridge and they think I’m a gourmet chef.