Chicken Cacciatore

September 10th, 2006

We found some beautiful, fresh chicken at our local market and bought it with no plans in mind. Walking through grocery stores, we’ve seen manufacturers jumping all over the organic bandwagon. Some things are safer or amazingly better when organic (organic milk is so much tastier to me than a store-brand milk), but there are clearly some questionable products. Organic or “free range” meats are not as well regulated and usually don’t mean what you’d think. Looking for meat from animals raised antibiotic-free is more telling. If they don’t give the animals antibiotics, they have to treat them better to keep them healthy.

So, we had chicken and no plan. No problem. I narrowed the possibilities down by visiting Cooking Light’s website and searched for chicken. By narrowed, I mean down to 1878 recipes. I have a hard enough time picking where to sit in a movie theater — and don’t get Jennifer started about me and parking! After three pages of chicken recipes brought to us by the letters A and B, I noticed the “Sort results by” option and selected “member rating” so the 5 star recipes rose to the top. I still only made it to page three when I clicked on Chicken Cacciatore Sicilian-Style.

Moment of admission: I’d never eaten chicken cacciatore. Neither had Jennifer. The biggest consequence of this is that neither of us would have a frame of reference when we tried the dish. Another side-effect is that my MacGyvering would undoubtably lead to a nontraditional, non-Sicilian-style cacciatore. But it sounded so good. Undaunted (despite lacking a few ingredients), I began to cook.

We only bought chicken breasts, not the variety of chicken parts described in the recipe. Somebody likes her chicken on the thin side, so I pounded them a little to get the desired thickness. In a little olive oil, I sauteed the chicken for a couple of minutes on each side in two batches. With the chicken out of the skillet, the onions and garlic went in to saute for 5 minutes.

Another moment of admission: I can’t stand celery. Makes me cringe just thinking about it. Early in college, I had the honor of judging a junior high science fair. Of the many fine projects, one still stands out vividly. The youngster gave me a little strip of paper and asked me to taste it. Stopping just short of a full-fledged gag reflex, I ripped the paper from my mouth. “Ahh, sensitive,” the young lady said as she made notes on her cute little clipboard. Still collecting data. Nice. She lost points, though, as she had nothing to cleanse my traumatized palate. What was on the paper? Urea. Why did I react so? Genetics. Some people are predisposed to HATE CELERY.

So, in place of the cup of celery, I added another cup of onions. It’s Eating Onions Together, after all. I deglazed the pan with half a cup of red wine vinegar and added a slew of other wonderful smelling ingredients. I didn’t have olives on hand, but did have capers. I also only had a can of crushed tomatoes instead of chopped, but I knew I wouldn’t know what I was missing. I placed the chicken back into the pan, brought the mixture to a boil, covered and simmered for 20 minutes. Another 25 minutes of uncovered simmering and the chicken was just right, tender enough to cut with my wooden spoon.

While the chicken simmered, I cooked some fusilli, a cute little twisting spiral shaped pasta. The recipe called for macaroni or cavatappi, but the fusilli seemed a reasonable substitute. I spooned fusilli onto each plate and dished the cacciatori over top.

Reading up on what I had created, I learned that cacciatore means hunter in Italian and that, related to food, cacciatore is something cooked “hunter-style” with tomatoes and onions. The red wine in the sauce gives the dish a tartness that was surprising and pleasant. The chicken was tender and broke apart with a fork. It also reheated nicely making several handy meals in the following days. I’m looking forward to eating this dish at an authentic Italian restaurant sometime to see how close I got it. I imagine, though, that this is the type of dish which varies with the chef as well as the chef’s mood.

Entry Filed under: Chicken, Italian, Main course, Pasta