Chicken in a Basil Cream Sauce

I randomly stumbled across THIS recipe blog. I used to go to church with one of the blog authors. ANYWAY, as always, I modified it, because I just can't NOT modify a recipe, and it is fan-tas-tic! So good. Really. And easy.

You'll find that the recipe seems very straight-forward and will wonder how and why I would change it. The first reason is because I ended up being out of bread crumbs. So I seasoned some flour with oregano, basil, salt and pepper, and it turned out perfect. If you do use flour instead, make sure you shake off any excess flour before cooking the chicken.

The second thing I changed is I thickened up the sauce at the end with a roux of cornstarch and water. I'll get into the basics of a roux on Wednesday. I just used about a tablespoon of cornstarch to a tablespoon of water and stirred that in. The sauce was just too thin for my liking.

On we go.

Ingredients:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup milk
1 cup chicken broth
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/4 cup butter
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Place milk and bread crumbs (or, in my case, seasoned flour) into 2 separate, shallow containers. Dip chicken breasts in milk, then cover in bread crumbs (flour). Melt butter in a skillet, and brown chicken in butter on both sides until cooked through. See the lovely golden brown color? That's what the flour does. Yummy.

After chicken is done, remove from skillet and cover with foil to keep warm. Add chicken broth to pan, stirring to loosen up the yummy-ness from the bottom of the pan. Stir in cream, basil and pepper, and bring to a boil. If you want to use the roux, add it at this point. Cook until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in parmesan cheese.

Serve sauce over chicken! And by that I mean smother your chicken in the sauce.
You'll definitely go back for more sauce. It's just too good.