Chicken with Sundried Tomato Basil Sauce on Savory French Toast

This dinner was invented based on the bagel I left out last night that I found lying on the kitchen counter, stale, this morning. It turned out to be an odd, but remarkable, and tasty, way to salvage stale bread. You can skip the bagel part and just do the chicken for a super quick meal.

You'll need (for two people):
1 stale bagel
1 whole boneless skinless chicken breast
2-3 eggs
1/2c flour
1T milk
2T herbes de provence
salt, pepper
3T sun dried tomatoes packed in oil
6 large basil leaves
2T butter
2T grapeseed oil
3T grated pecorino romano

In the morning:

Beat one egg with salt, pepper, and 1T milk. Slice the bagel in 3 thin slices. Soak each slice in the egg mixture, then stack then and put them, with the extra egg, in a bagel-sized tupperware in the fridge, covered.

Thirty minutes before dinnertime:

Remove bagel from fridge.

Slice chicken lengthwise, as if butterflying, but cut completely. Keep cutting to get even pieces. You should have 4 large pieces and a few small ones. Sandwich pieces, lying flat, between two sheets of waxed paper and hit them, hard, with a meat mallet to flatten-- you want each piece to be about 1/4" thick, but it's most important that they're even.

Sprinkle both sides of chicken pieces with salt, pepper, and herbes de provence. Lay out a plate with 1 beaten egg and a paper towel with flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

Heat 1T butter in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. When hot, add bagel slices. Cook until brown, then flip. This should take about 7-10 minutes; be careful bagels don't burn.

In the meantime, heat grapeseed oil in a cast-iron skillet. When oil is hot, dredge chicken in flour, then egg, then flour, and fry until golden brown and crispy, about 2-3 minutes per side.

Set cooked chicken & bagel slices aside in a warm oven. In a small frying pan, heat sun dried tomatoes with their oil. When oil begins to sputter, tear basil directly into tomatoes. Turn off heat and swirl in remaining 1T butter.

To Serve:


Place two bagels slices next to each other on a plate; top with chicken; pour tomato-basil sauce on top, and sprinkle with pecorino.