Recipe: Chicken Cacciatore - new (Marcella Hazan)

Recipe:

This is from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

I don't have the recipe in front of me as I write this, but it was simple enough I expect I can reproduce it fairly accurately.

• 1  3-4 lb. Chicken, cut into 8 pieces
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 cup onion, sliced thinly
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 1 1/2 cups raw plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or a can of italian San Marzano tomatoes)
• Salt and pepper

1. Wash chicken pieces in cold water and pat thoroughly dry with paper towels.
2. Put oil and onions in skillet over medium heat.  Cook until onions are translucent.
3. Add garlic.  Add chicken pieces, skin side down, being careful not to crowd the pan.
4. Brown chicken on all sides.
5. Add salt, pepper, and white wine.  Continue to cook until wine is reduced by half.
6. Add tomatoes.  Turn heat down to simmer, cover (but leave slightly off to vent), and cook 40 minutes or until thigh is cooked through, stirring and basting occasionally.

How did I do:
Well I didn't follow the recipe precisely, since I was using a particularly large chicken and only cooking for one (plus leftovers) so I just made the legs and thighs.  But the rest of the ingredients I kept in the same amounts.

I chose NOT to use a non-stick pan, since I was cooking in oil and wanted to brown things and had some vague idea that a non-stick wasn't the right pan for this.  And when I went to turn the chicken I discovered that everything had stuck.  LOL.  But I just kept scraping the onions and the chicken skin off the bottom of the pan, and tried not to let it bother me.  It smelled fantastic, and didn't have any burnt smell at all, so I decided not to worry about it too much.

It was so delicious!  The depth of flavor was fantastic.  I was so proud!


Lessons learned:

• Just as Marcella said in the intro of her cookbook, you cannot rush the food or you won't get the rich flavors.  So I have learned that this is not a quick dish, even though it is simple, and that I shouldn't expect it to be.  Take my time and let the flavors develop.  My patience was rewarded.
• Peeling tomatoes really IS simple if you blanch them.  I mean, yeah, all the cooking shows say so.  But I hadn't actually DONE it before.  Cinchy! 
• When I realized everything had gotten stuck, I had been tempted to cook some more onions in my non-stick pan and transfer the chicken (and some freshly sliced garlic) into there, and throw out the stuck-on onion from the original pan, and continue the process in the new pan.  I'm glad I didn't.  Yes, a few of the onion slices got really dark, but they still tasted wonderful.  A mistake is not a disaster.

Isn't it beautiful!