Chicken with leprosy?

Nothing says "gourmet dinner" like your food looking like a Biblical plague. Heck if Job Chicken (as in the Biblical reference, not what a Mexican looks for in Home Depot parking lots or the name of a character from "Arrested Development") ends up being a hit, then all is good with the world.

Actually it was my own laziness that led to the dish looking bad but luckily it still came out tasting great. I made Lemon Chicken with Cream Cheese and Oven Dried Tomatoes. It was even accompanied by a side of homemade Scalloped Potatoes I tried making for the first time, but more on that train-wreck another time.

Ever since I've eaten lemon chicken while visiting Buca Di Beppo a few years back, its been a favorite dish of mine. Mixing it with a chicken dish I tried at Carrabas made it better: cream cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. So, I've cooked the original dish a few times at home, usually just the lemon chicken over some rice (perhaps with a few capers thrown in for good measure). Many times the dish has come out tasting great and I've found myself wanting to drink the leftover juices directly from the frying pan (I won't confirm or deny if I've actually done this). So, when I was looking for dinner ideas last evening and found myself with a plethora of cream cheese left over from our morning bagels, I decided to take the next step in my lemon-chicken relationship (no, I didn't give the chicken a promise ring).

Since I already had the chicken and cream cheese, I figured it would be an opportune time to break open the homemade oven-dried tomatoes that I made and canned previously with Val (my wife: don't tell her about the promise ring I didn't give the chicken, all I need is some weird discussion about my lack of commitment to poultry....and we all know where THAT leads!). So what's the difference between sun-dried and oven-dried tomatoes? About 500 watts and a higher electric bill (thank you! I'll be here all week!). Actually found a recipe using garden grown tomatoes and the result is similar to sun-dried but sweeter and tastier. Unfortunately the yield you get from 8 pounds of garden-grown tomatoes isn't much, but great-tasting nonetheless.

So in all my infinite laziness, after carefully marinating the chicken breasts in Cayuga wine, olive oil, kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and garlic for about an hour, what do I do after dredging them in flour? I don't let them set in the fridge for the mandatory additional 30 minutes to allow the flour to adhere properly to the chicken. As I pan fried them it had looked like they were getting over bad sunburns and were peeling (and now I've got the image of Goldmember peeling off and tasting his own skin...sorry to pass along that image!)

Yummy, huh? In the end, they still came out great but taught myself to be a little more patient when it comes to pan frying chicken. Sure I've made the mistake before but I thought I was above those rookie mistake. Apparently not.