The Thrill of the Hunt: Pollo alla Cacciatora

For this week's food update, I decided to go with a recipe that should be somewhat more familiar to American tastebuds--and certainly made from ingredients more readily available from American grocery stores. I landed on pollo alla cacciatora, aka chicken cacciatore, a staple of American Italian restaurants.

Though we'll be skipping the red checkered tablecloth and straw-wrapped Chianti, though

The name actually means "hunter's chicken," and this is a rustic, peasant dish meant to stretch what meat was available. Traditionally, this would be made with an old hen whose egg-laying days were done, but finding anything but very young chickens at the grocery store is pretty unusual these days. Any chicken will do. This recipe comes from Toscana (the region of Italy made famous by Florence, Pisa, and its wine. More on that in my next post), and calls for the following ingredients: bone-in chicken (I used 2 legs and 2 thighs, but you could easily use an entire chicken broken down without changing the rest of the recipe), 1 onion, 2 carrots, 3 stalks of celery, a few cloves of garlic (as much as you want, really), 2 stalks of fresh rosemary, 1 can of tomatoes (14 oz, I think; I used one labelled 400g), Italian parsley (aka flat-leaf parsley. The curly stuff is really only for garnish), nutmeg (optional, but delicious), olive oil, and red wine (preferably something Tuscan, like a Chianti Classico. My next post will be about Tuscan wine, for anyone who wants more guidance than this). For the pan, use something wide and relatively deep, like a brasier, sautè pan (if the sides are high enough), or a dutch oven.

The chicken I used. It seemed silly to use a whole chicken for just me, and I much prefer the dark meat anyway. You can increase the amount of chicken without changing anything else in the recipe.

To start, chop up all your veggies except the rosemary (leave it on the stalk) and parsley (that comes last):

You want roughly equal proportions of onion, celery, and carrot

Heat up several tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat and begin browning the chicken, after a liberal salt-and-peppering. Do it in two batches if need be; don't crowd the pan!

This is more or less what you're going for

Once the chicken is nice and browned add all the veggies you just chopped, turn down the heat a bit, and make sure that they're equally coated in the cooking oil. Alternatively, you could remove the chicken before you add these veggies, in order to make them cook a bit more evenly. I liked doing it with the chicken still in the pan, because when everything was said and done the chopped carrot and celery still had some snap to them, instead of turning to mush. Your choice, though!

I moved the chicken around a bit at this point too. All those veggies need oil!

Sautè for a few minutes, until the veggies begin to soften and the onions start to go clear. Next, add the wine, about a cup, and deglaze with a wooden spoon.

I also used this opportunity to rinse any errant veggies off the top of the chicken

Next, add your tomatoes after thoroughly crushing them up. I generally just use my hands and break them up until they're the consistency of a chunky marinara sauce. Alternatively I guess you could use a food processor or even a blender, but I don't see the point. If you took the chicken out of the pan earlier, now is the time to return it.

As with last week's rabbit, you don't want so much liquid as to entirely cover the meat

Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pan, and let it cook for about 30 minutes or until the chicken has cooked through. This would also be a good time to work on whatever you want to serve alongside the chicken. I decided on a nice creamy polenta, but pasta (something that can support a heavy, chunky sauce, i.e. not thin spaghetti or something similar) or even some mashed potatoes would work just as well.

Water, cornmeal, a little butter, some grated hard cheese, and 15 minutes is all you need for the perfect side dish.

After 30 minutes, grate some nutmeg into the pot and add your parsley, finely chopped. I let it cook another 5 minutes or so, to let the sauce thicken a bit You will probably need to adjust the seasoning at this point as well; I added a bit more salt and pepper.

Serve as such:

There's a thigh buried under the sauce

Super simple, and super tasty! Drink a glass of whatever wine you used to cook with (Chianti, in my case), and enjoy!