WARNING! This is not my chicken cheese steak! But I must say, it is a pretty good ringer.

Many months have passed since my last post, and many events have transpired in my life since then…some good, some bad, but all –and this is where I slightly numb myself to my own annoyance at my latent Pollyanna tendencies– learning experiences that will probably help me in the long run. At least, that’s what I have to tell myself when life gets a little too sassy for my own taste.

The good: I’ve finished writing my wonderful thesis, of which I feel immensely proud and accomplished. I graduated with my Master’s and am now justified in walking around town feeling like a fancy pants. I adopted the world’s most wonderful puppy and revel in her cuteness on a near-daily basis (note to all: if you’re considering getting a pet, please adopt! Do some research and it totally pays off. Plus, what could be better than knowing you have given a deserving puppy a happy home? Now, you won’t get bummed out when you see those ultra depressing Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials).

The bad: The unbearable evils of summer heat. The realization that I may or may not have just wasted the last seven months of my life. The fact that my completed thesis has yet to be submitted to the school on account of some mysterious email glitch. Also, on a lighter note, I’m trying to grow out my hair and it is just taking waaaaaay too long. Oh, but let’s not forget the fact that I have a Master’s and I have virtually no compensation to show for it. But at least I have all those other millions of unemployed twenty-somethings to keep me company.

Back in November, I wrote that I was on the road to 75% happiness. Well, as it turns out, that just wasn’t good enough. Through some mysterious aberration in my own way of thinking, I’ve come to realize that anything short of perfection just doesn’t cut it with me. I’ve had faint inklings about this in the past (see: Pollo Veracruzana and peace of mind) But now, I have become fully aware of the extent of this thought process of mine. In November, I wasn’t really in a position to be very choosy. I hadn’t finished school yet. I had little to no free time. And poverty was giving me the stink eye every waking moment of my life. Today, I’d say two out of those three things are no longer a problem, and the last one that still is is that great catalyst –the fuel I’ll use to tenaciously find perfection.

Enter, the chicken cheese steak. Since my beloved Nicholas is, unfortuantely, a Nor Cal native (a fact he never lets me forget whenever we get stuck in traffic or the weather tops 90°) he often engages in the less-than-amusing habit of pointing out everything that’s wrong with Southern California. Granted, traffic and weather are jank down here. But when it comes to food, I refuse to believe that So Cal is in any way inferior to Nor Cal. For the most part, I’ve managed to get him to agree with me, except for one food genre: sandwiches.

He compares any sandwich to those golden sandwiches of his youth, consumed after long high school days and those lazy, listless weekends. In his mind, no So Cal sandwich has ever come close to being on par with the perfection he found at Italian Delite Submarine Sandwiches, and the creme de la creme of Italian Delite (at least, according to Nick) is their chicken cheese steak.

Over the course of the past five years, he’s quested to find something that rivals the paragon of chicken he has in his mind, only to be nonplussed by most of his findings. Frustrated and a little nostalgic, he decided that enough was enough, and the time had come to try his own hand at making the elusively perfect chicken cheese steak in his own kitchen. I was there for the whole thing, and I soaked up the bounty in the end.

The tools: sliced Provolone; chicken breast marinated with vinegar, sea salt, and cracked pepper; sliced white onions; lettuce; tomato; Frank’s RedHot Cayenne Pepper Sauce; crusty french bread. Ok, so the french bread got a little burned on the outside, thanks to Nick’s overzealous electric oven. Yet in spite of this little mishap, the end product was as lovely an imitation as could be imagined. Even Nick, the perpetually hard to please king of sassy criticism, was bowled over at what he had created.

In the end, who really wants to settle for…pleh? Why waste time eating remedial sandwiches when you can recreate perfection at home? Why devote months to a trip down a potentially blind alley when you can hope for the best, douse yourself in optimism, and shoot for what you really want? No more. Perfection is on my horizon, and I plan to run at it like whoa. Remember that oh-so-elusive dream job? The one that it broke my heart to move on from? Well, either there’s some sort of computer glitch that has been plaguing this “careers” website since November, or that dream job has yet to be filled. I’m hoping it’s the latter, and I’m hoping this time around, things end a little better.

Oh, dream job. Please let me make you my chicken cheese steak. I want to gobble you up and enjoy the satisfaction of regular employment and great-tasting burps.

In the past weeks, the sort of upheaval common to a graduate student –moments of “What the deuce did I get myself into?” or “Why won’t the work just stop?!” and “When am I going to possibly find time to do all this?!!!”– forced me to re-prioritize the amount of things I have on my plate.

Yes, in my opinion, there are still one too many things on my plate (and what’s worse, far too many things that are still up in the air!) but amidst this reshuffling of my life and schedule, some clarity and peace of mind came out, allowing me to see that, for better or worse, that inner Massiel knows exactly where to draw the line. Outer Massiel is still trying to get hip to her game.

Like with many of my cooking/life revelations, it would seem that simplicity is really where its at. Inner (and Outer) Massiel may be ambitious, but neither is the type to load up on nonsense just for the sake of bragging to people that she’s waking up at 4 a.m., going to sleep at 2 a.m., and multitasking about fifty things. No, instead, let me take the few things that I like and blow them out of the water with awesome.

Thus, the pollo veracruzana. A recipe of five ingredients, its simplicity is only matched by its outrageous tastiness. A favorite and staple of Mentone House, it is my culinary contribution to the world today, along with the general wish that people not feel guilty about taking time to tell life and obligation, “Get out of my face! I don’t even like you that much!” and to welcome with open arms, challenging projects that are worthwhile. Like chicken.

Follow the jump to peep my full recipe. Prepare to start drooling.

This recipe is an adaptation of Marcela Valladolid’s Pescado a la Veracruzana recipe, altered and adjusted owing in no small part to my boo’s distaste for my fish, and my general feeling of being creeped out by capers.

Recipe for Pollo Veracruzana

2 large (or 3 small) chicken breast fillets

1 white onion, roughly chopped

1 Anaheim chile, stemmed and seeded, roughly chopped

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1 1/2 cups crushed, canned tomatoes

Salt & Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Season both sides of chicken breasts with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside. Over medium heat, lightly fry onion, Anaheim chile, and garlic in olive oil. No more than three minutes. In a separate pan, sear the chicken breasts until golden. Remove from pan and place in a glass baking dish. Add the tomatoes to the pan with the onions and chile, and cook together until bubbling. Pour the mixture over the chicken, and place the baking dish into the oven for about five minutes.

Serve immediately, and make sure you have at least a handful of chips with with to soak up all the tomato-y goodness that you’ll almost certainly have left over. Enjoy.

In my house, my mother’s cooking was always characterized by its simplicity. She doesn’t deep fry. She doesn’t over season. In fact, her two best cooking friends are chicken and lemon. For that reason, the over-stuffed, over-dry, giant, honking turkey was banished from our holidays very long ago.

We experimented with individual Cornish game hens for a while there, but after we noticed that even that tiny bird was too much for us, we opted for the single, more manageable roasted chicken. It was a perfect fit.

Thanksgiving, this year, was missing one crucial element: my delightfully sassy sister. Budgets, circumstance, and responsibility are relegating her to the island of Manhattan this holiday season, and for the first time, our immediate family has had to make due with phone calls instead of face-to-face love.

Of course, split family time is something we’ve had to learn to make due with. In the year since my grandmother’s passing, my family has morphed into a strange version of its old self. With the glue that once held us all together gone, relationships have become strained, and some people’s worst habits have been allowed to fester and grow.

True, certain aspects of that extended family life have gone from bad to worse. But luckily, the bonds that were happy and healthy to begin with have managed to get better.

For that reason, in spite of the storm clouds of insanity that perpetually hang over some members of my family, this year’s Thanksgiving -where only my mother, father, my sister (via telephone) and beloved Nicholas were in attendance- managed to be my favorite to date.

Thanksgiving for Thanksgiving’s sake -and all that nonsensical pomp about pious pilgrims- was the last thing on my mind. Still, for whatever reason, I looked forward to this year’s Thanksgiving with a sort of serious devotion. In the days leading up to the holiday, I began to notice certain things about the people around me. My classmates, bogged down with stress and overloaded with work, were going to great lengths to make sure they were going to be with family or, at the very least, with a select group of close friends.

The streets were packed with people hustling to get out of town. The stores were jammed. The freeways were basically a vast, concrete constipation. Yet in spite of all this, I couldn’t help but feel a happy little glow beginning to grow inside.

Life may suck from time to time. I may have spotted one too many white hairs sprouting on my head. And I’m pretty sure all those trapped on the freeway along with me were feeling pretty much the same. But isn’t there’s something wonderfully reassuring about knowing that, in spite of all this nonsense, there is still pleasure to be gained by good food, good company, and a good after-dinner stroll along a tree lined path with your boo? I think there is. Suck it, stress. Take that, loopy family. White hairs, your days are numbered. I’m busy taking gloating over the fact that my happy belly will never be dominated.

(Pictured: top row-lemon garlic green beans, chicken and mushrooms tortellini; middle row-roasted chicken in orange and lemon marinade, jalapeño corn bread; bottom row-cinnamon cranberry sauce, apple and walnut stuffing)

So, of course, I applied, feeling fully confident that I had found a job that would not only make me happy, but would be a perfect blend of all my skills and interests. Since then, I’ve devolved into a semi-manic state every time I hear my phone ring, or every time I get an email. Is it them? Do they want to set up an interview?

Case in point: going to class on Monday afternoon. Like most of my classmates, I put my phone on vibrate when I’m in class, and should I get any calls while class is in session, I wait until our ten minute break to check them. This past Monday, as I was speaking to the class about one of my potential stories, I hear my phone vibrating from across the room. Once back at my desk, I glance at my call log and subsequently have my hear skip a beat–it was a 310 phone number and they left a message!

Who but my potential employer would call from a Los Angeles-area number and leave a voicemail? Who else but our termite inspector lady calling to schedule an extermination appointment. Womp womp womp

After the ten minute break, back to class as usual, I get another call. Could it be? It was another 310 phone number and it was different from the first number! Still, there was something familiar about the last four digits of the phone number. Once class ended, I checked my voicemail en route to my car. And wouldn’t you know? It was someone calling with a job offer. But! It still wasn’t dream job. It was the very same people with whom I interviewed over a month ago!

Still fuzzy on the circumstances, it would seem that they are now offering me a job that had been denied to me not that long ago. Gripped with confusion, I didn’t know what steps to take forward, and I had no idea what to feel other than some mild flattery. Should I take it? But what if I take it and my dream job calls me? What if I don’t take it and my dream job never calls me? Should I take it anyway and just keep hope alive that dream job will call me eventually?

Yes, I took it. Some money is better than no money. It’s not my dream job, by a far stretch. But it’s something I can do. It’s a job. On a 1-to-100 scale of perfection, this situation is at about a 75. Employment is hard to come by, so I can’t really start being too picky right now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a little pleased with the way things turned out.

So what does all this have to do with a picture of Rice A Roni? Case in point: last night’s dinner. Committed to our new low-calorie dining (which has prompted me to lose about three pounds and Nick to lose ten), we opted for a Balsamic-marinated chicken with mushroom and onion Roasted Garlic Italian whole grain rice. Now, if you must know anything about me as an eater, know this: cheese is my worst enemy.

No, it has nothing to do with being lactose intolerant, although that does factor in from time to time. No, this is a life-long struggle with food, and people’s crazy idea that putting cheese on things will make it better. Cheese tastes like old feet. Period.

Through meticulous prodding and training, I’ve come to tolerate only two kinds of cheeses: mozzarella and pepper Jack. Everything else? Please get out of my face. So! As I was preparing the rice (as Nick is the meat cooker in our house), I happened to catch a faint whiff of cheese as I opened the bag of seasoning. My cheese-identifying nose is rarely wrong, so I consulted the box to double check. Yes, there it was: parmesan!

A few weeks ago, Nick brought home a parmesan-crusted chicken. The sauce we made for it was delicious, but my cheese-hating mouth eventually forced me to scrape off most of the crust in order to be able to eat the chicken. Fearing the same would happen with this rice, I went for a Plan B (which basically just involved me cooking a lot of green beans so I could have at least some kind of side dish).

As it turns out, the cheesiness was mostly in the smell. Yes, there was still a hint of a cheese in the rice, but thanks to the joyous flavor blends that come out of sautéing mushrooms, garlic, and onions together, most of the cheese ended up fading into the background. I’d say that meal was 75% perfect.

One month ago, I would have been thrilled to have landed my current job. Now, I’m somewhat pleased, but still hopeful for better. Cheese-tainted rice isn’t the end of the world, but thanks to some fancy veggie additions, it was just a little more tolerable.

I’m still here, dream job! And non-cheese rice? I’m still here, too.

Angela Martin, a staunch vegetarian and harsh critic of most things indulgent, lapsed into frivolity for just this one day.

Constrained within the parameters of our diet, Nicholas and I have been suffering for want of super indulgent delights. With our daily calorie intake whittled down until we both achieve our desired weights, most of our food loves -grains, meats, dairy- are pretty much out of the question.

Still, when we first decided to undertake this diet, we resolved to allow ourselves at least one day a month for feasting. The first such feast day for us? Halloween.

With a case of Blue Moon‘s seasonal brew, a mushroom and pepperoni pizza from the wizards at Folliero’s, a dozen garlic knots (for me), and a bag of Halloween candy (for Nick), we allowed ourselves to indulge in a mini autumnal festival, celebrated in our living room with pumpkin-spiced candles flickering in the background.

There’s nothing really quite as lovely as the feeling I get after downing a chicken kabob pita wrap and fries. Tasty, light, perfect. And words cannot express how much Nick loves this place…enough to have it be his restaurant of choice during his post-graduation dinner with his parents and mine.

This week, for one of my classes, I was charged with taking my SLR on a photo adventure. True, I originally intended to go to The Oinkster to cover their Craftsman Beer Dinner, and was tremendously inconvenienced when those plans didn’t quite work out.

But like a faithful friend, Gaby was there to help and, as always, she was there to satisfy. I tried as best I could to capture the ambiance without (1) pissing off the restaurant’s management, (2) creeping out customers, (3) getting sticky food hands all over my camera. The sights and sounds are there, but sadly, technology has not yet found a way to embed the smell of hookah smoke into a YouTube video.

Please enjoy my little photo montage of my night at Gaby’s.

Still, it seems that all I was waiting for was this lazy Sunday afternoon to draw me back into my dining world, with thoughts of food and future bubbling around in my head.

For the past few days, I have been wallowing in renewed stress about my current lack of employment. With my graduation creeping up on me (May 2011), the fact that I have yet to find legitimate means to an income has morphed itself into an omnipresent monster that absolutely insists on monopolizing all my energy. The Huffington Post’s The (Un)Employment Chronicles helped to alleviate my stress…and simultaneously make it rocket into a new stratosphere.

The good news: I’m not the only person being emotionally and financially crippled by my total inability to plan my life beyond the next few days. The bad news: there are just that many more people who are going to be competing against me when I’m finally forced into a full-time job search.

Let me just back track a little and explain one of the things that plunged me into this state in the first place. A few days ago, I went on a job interview. The position was hardly my dream job. On the contrary, it was something that I undertook more because it was just something I could do rather than something I really wanted to do. And what’s more, they were going to be playing me $25+/hour (in case you didn’t know, that’s about $25+/hour more than I’m currently making).

Nevertheless, I went with an open mind and an upbeat, please-hire-me attitude. The interview went great. Everyone I talked to loved me. As I was walking out the door, I was basically told that, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the job was as good as mine.

Two days later, unforeseen catastrophe decided to leave me a voicemail. Someone else had come in to interview who had just a little more experience than I did, and under the given circumstances, a position just couldn’t be offered to me anymore. Damn, just when I thought I was finally going to be able to adopt my dog after all.

School stress was mounting. Unemployment stress was through the roof. What could I possibly have left in my life that wasn’t going to push me headlong into fits of tears? Food, as it turns out. And a nice, old nun in Hollywood.

I met Sister Mary Pia almost a year ago while working on a piece about nuns in Los Angeles. Back then, my emotional instability was reaching a legendary high. My grandmother had recently passed and, coupled with the outrageous anxiety I was a feeling as a first-year graduate student, I was experiencing mini freak outs about three times a week. Now, it may not have been the most journalistic thing to do, but after I got my interview from her, I turned my voice recorder off and just let all my troubles spill out before me. Her tiny voice offered me prayer and comfort, like any sweet nun would do, and I gladly took whatever peace she provided.

This year, on another journalistic mission, I sought Sister Mary Pia out again and, slightly less tearful than the first time, told her about my job frustration. It’s a shame she’s not a grandmother herself. Her skills as a nurturer are well-honed and, mixed with a healthy dose of unconditional flattery, assured me that my skills would surely lead me to something great, and that I only needed to keep my spirits up.

True, she did try to convince me that employment as a writer for a Catholic magazine was a good route to take. But then again, what grandmother doesn’t dole out advice with just a touch of agenda pushing?

Prayer and positive thinking have not yet delivered my dream job to me, nor have they had my loans forgiven, or paid the adoption fee for my dog. But I did leave the Monastery of the Angels–and the Monastery of the Angels gift shop– that day a little more cheerful than when I went in, and with $20 worth of home-baked snacks. Pumpkin bread and peanut brittle –who knew that was the ideal prescription for the temporary relief of life’s headaches?

So thanks to a box of pie crust mix, I am now the proud owner of a delightful cherry raspberry pomegranate pie, and I feel no apprehension in sharing my recipe with anyone who would like it. Follow the jump and enjoy.

Recipe for Cherry Raspberry Pomegranate Pie

1 lb. frozen or fresh pitted black cherries

7 tsp. raspberry pomegranate preserves (**I was looking for 100% pomegranate preserves, but all I could find was a raspberry mix)

2 tsp. orange marmalade (**can be substituted with orange zest)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 tbs. corn starch

In a small sauce pan, heat cherries until they begin to release a good amount of juice. Boil off some of the liquid, about two minutes. Add in preserves and slowly stir in. Take off the heat. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar and corn starch and begin to add into the heated cherry mix several spoonfuls at a time. Add in marmalade/zest. If mixture is too watery, add in more corn starch. Take off the heat and let cool for a few minutes before adding into any trusted pie crust you may have.

This is not a picture of my actual pie! Scroll down for the real deal (photo by Mikkel Vang)

“What is going on with my life?” I asked myself as I nibbled on a piece of spicy tuna roll in the middle of the afternoon. The often melancholic nature of my life was thrown into sharp focus after having all my flaws and all my problems eloquently spelled out in the New York Times (see What Is It About 20-Somethings?), and “What is going on with my life?” continued to be a question with no answer for the better part of my day.

I’ve rarely felt like I have loads in common with my peers, but reading through this piece proved that I am indeed another statistic and, to be honest, I felt a little comfort in that. I mentally checked off all the things that apply to me, ending up with a sizable list: moved back home with parents at least one (check! -after graduating from UCLA in 2008, I spent the next year back in West Covina with mama and papa), spent at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married (check! -currently living with Nicholas sans marriage, as I have negotiated with him that we both need steady jobs and health plans before we get married), gone back to school for lack of better options (check! -holla back, Annenberg!) competing ferociously for unpaid internships (check! -ugh, unpaid internships are like a freaking slap in the face), forstalling the beginning of adult life (check!).

Seven months away from turning 25, I am childless, husbandless, and jobless…but I’m not in any rush to attain any of those things. But would a 1970s Massiel have already attained all that? Statistically speaking, probably. Yet 2000s Massiel still has a long road ahead. I have my Master’s degree to finish. I have to discover the world. I have to convince National Geographic that hiring me would be the best thing they ever did. I have to adopt a beautiful German Shepherd before I can even think of having kids. And I have to get married somewhere in between the dog and the baby.

Yet to a modernly old fashioned amalgam like myself, my “transition to adulthood” is looming all the same. When will I really be able to stand on my own two feet? Will I really have all this transitional mess squared away by 30? How does this whole post go back to cherry pie?

Skip back to my sushi lunch, eaten in tragic hipster fashion as I watched re-runs of “America’s Next Top Model” and fiddled with my MacBook Pro. Somewhere, the urge to eat cherry pie struck. From where, I don’t know, because I’ve never eaten cherry pie before. (I know, but I am my mother’s daughter, and she brought me up in the model of sticking to things we know, i.e. apple pie). Then, drawing inspiration from my morning snack of Pomegranate Cherry NutriGrain bar, I conceived the idea to test my first invented recipe, and make a cherry pomegranate pie entirely from scratch.

I may not have a job. My soon-to-be-over summer was whiled away on my sofa. But damn it, if I can’t make my own pie, then what can I do? So, as a testament to my 20-something will to (eventually) succeed, I set off to the market, collected pitted black cherries, raspberry pomegranate preserves, and a bag of flour. I wanted to prove to myself that, in spite of the sticky post-adolescent funk I currently find myself in, there are some redeeming qualities somewhere in me. Somewhere. Maybe way in the back.

So I made my own pie crust. I pounded and kneaded and made my hands smell like butter. I devotedly made my cherry filling, cleverly mixing the raspberry pomegranate love. I popped my first entirely homemade pie in the oven, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

And then, on trying to retrieve my pie from the oven about an hour later (and simultaneously balancing my cell phone while talking to my mom) gravity got the better of me and made my pie wobble dangerously on my oven mit. The pie was saved…but some of the filling punched its way out the side. Figures.

My crust was paler than I wanted. The edge was stained with the blood of wayward cherries. The butter smell seems to have been permanently attached to my fingers. Oh, but the filling. The filling is divinely sweet, robustly cherry, subtly pomegranate, rascally raspberry (especially the seeds that get stuck in your teeth from time to time), and secretly zingy on account of the two tablespoons of orange marmalade I threw in for the hell of it.

My cherry pie is not perfect. It’s not even 100% cherry. But it’s mine and it’s a work in progress. It’ll be perfect eventually, but for a first try, it is pleasantly surprising. And at least the insides are absolutely perfect.

So it came to pass that this past Monday, on a mixed whim of laziness and a general desire to get out of the apartment, Nick and I trolled down to Olive Garden for a late evening dinner. The place was bursting at the seams when we got there, so we had to bide our time at the bar. Two glasses of red wine for me, and one coke and rum for him later, we were at our table feeling good, smiling a lot, and happily tuning out the turmoil around us.

Stuffed Chicken Marsala

To a cynical eye, this is where the evening turned afoul. To me, this is where I came to fully appreciate the skill that Nick and I have managed to hone when it comes to cooking. He ordered the stuffed chicken marsala (Oven-roasted chicken breast stuffed with Italian cheeses and sun-dried tomatoes, topped with mushrooms and a creamy marsala sauce. Served with garlic parmesan mashed potatoes) while I opted for the good old regular chicken marsala (Sautéed chicken breasts in a savory sauce of mushrooms, garlic and marsala wine. Served with Tuscan potatoes and bell peppers).

Chicken Marsala

His dish came looking fairly good and smelling even better. Mine came looking good and smelling oddly like Teriyaki chicken. First bite proved that my Teriyaki assessment was spot-on. The poor cook at the Manhattan Beach Olive Garden is obviously laboring under the misapprehension that chicken marsala is supposed to be cooked with profuse amounts of ginger. To me and my taste buds, we know better.

Click to see other Dolcini flavors

If I were a more short-tempered person, my night would have gone to pot and there would have been no salvaging it. But my chicken, however gingery it may have been, was still edible. My potatoes (and you know I love my potatoes!) were particularly yum. A third glass of wine, a chocolate mousse with dark chocolate cookie crust dolcini (at left), and the increasingly pink-cheeked company of my Nicholas assured an all-around lovely time.

But I’ve learned my lesson. Olive Garden is good for stuffing your face with bread sticks, downing several glasses of wine, and feeling both in love and oddly cheap at the same time. But for good chicken marsala? I’m afraid I’ll just have to look to my own kitchen from now on. And next time I go to Olive Garden? I’ll just stick to some capellini.

Follow the jump to get our recipe for some tasty, tasty, tasty chicken marsala.

Recipe for Chicken Marsala

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

All-purpose flour

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

8 oz. (or approximately 10) thinly-sliced mushrooms

3/4 cup Marsala wine (or, if its slim pickings, a decent white wine)

1/4 chicken stock

Approx. six slices of turkey bacon, roughly diced

Two garlic cloves, diced

Tenderize chicken with a meat mallet, then lightly dust with flour (note: Tyler will tell you to add salt to your dredging flour, but we’ve found there is absolutely no need for it! The bacon is salted a-plenty, and your dish will actually taste better if you let the bacon do the salting for you). In one skillet, lightly pan fry the chicken until golden. Remove from the pan and add in the bacon. Fry until almost fully cooked. In a separate skillet, add the oil, garlic, and mushrooms until mushrooms are tender. Add the bacon to the sauteed mushrooms, and let heat together for about 30 seconds. Add in chicken stock and wine, lower the heat, and let the liquid reduce to a thin sauce. Pour finished sauce -mushrooms, bacon, and all!- over your chicken. Enjoy. BIG NOTE: You will have leftover sauce when you’re done with your chicken, but it will be so delicious, you won’t want to throw it out. Make sure you have a healthy serving of either rice or garlic bread to soak that magic up. You’ll regret it if you don’t.