Chicken in Chianti tomato sauce

 

Pollo all’Arrabiata

Adapted from “A Table in Tuscany,” collected and illustrated by Leslie Forbes.This is a charmingly illustrated book that makes you want to up and move to Italy. Or at least book a rental. Only quibble: The ingredients are listed in capital letters, making it very hard to read. But one imagines having enough time to decipher them while ensconced in one's villa.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 chicken cut up into about 8 to 10 pieces

2 cups Chianti

½ hot chili pepper, slightly crushed

4 to 5 tomatoes, roughly chopped

Method

Heat oil over medium heat in a large deep skillet. Cook onion and garlic until tender. Salt and pepper chicken pieces and add to pan. Cook until well browned on both sides. (If you don’t have a large enough pan, you might need to do this in stages.)

Add wine and chili pepper and cook over low heat until wine is reduced by half. Count on this step taking at least 20 minutes. Flip chicken over and add tomatoes. Cover and cook for another 25 minutes or until chicken is done.

The serving suggestion is over long ribbon pasta tossed with olive oil and parsley. At any rate, something to slurp up the wine tomato sauce is in order.

Rating: The translation of the recipe is Enraged Chicken, which I just find delightful. It gets its name from the hot pepper, but honestly, it's fairly mellow by the time it's cooked in all that Chianti. I'd say it's more like a mildly irritated chicken. At any rate, it's a sauce with a nice amount of complexity. I'd file it under a not particularly difficult Sunday night supper at home for the family. And you'll have part of a bottle of Chianti leftover to go with it, so make it a tasty one.