this is the way we change seasons – I found this beautiful mushroom while out on my walk with the dog yesterday.
Honestly, can one ever run out of things to learn about Italy? I know I sound like a broken record these days but my last trip only served to deepen my obsession with the place. In such a small country, so many important events took place, so many groups of people gathered, grew and built, and the remnants of cultures and current life there continue to be nothing short of enthralling. Whether in the remote countryside or the most famous of cities, life abounds with an amazing depth, beauty, and ethereal quality. Just look at the pictures. (It is because I do constantly when I am not there, that I can go on like this)
Right now I have about 10 different books piled up around my house in my various sitting places that I am in the process of studying. Wednesday night on a rerun of Eat, Drink Italy with Vic Rallo, he was interviewing the granddaughter (I believe it was), of Lorenza de Medici and they made these wonderful orange scented almond biscotti – with 4 whole eggs and 2 yolks. Most recipes don’t call for this many eggs. I spent about 20 minutes trying to track the recipe down on the internet to no avail. It was around 10pm and I said to myself, “I have that book”(shocker), referring to one by Lorenza that they had discussed, and I shuffled on down to the family room and dug it out. I think my Mom gave me this book back in the 1980s – it’s a treasure I hadn’t looked at for a long while. Off I went into my haze of infatuation as I looked at the beautiful photos in the book. Of course, I was already in a state anyway…….
Wednesday, my cousin’s wife posted a picture from Trastevere and my heart went, ohhhhhh, and sunk! They’re in Rome! Trastevere takes me back to our first visit to Rome in 2007 when Ryan was there to, among other things, sing at St. Peter’s Basilica for Father’s Day Mass. (He wouldn’t be caught dead singing these days – too bad!) What a great trip that was – my first ever trip to Rome. Since then, I’ve been in love with Rome. You can read my many posts about it from May 2013. I could easily live there (just another place in Italy I could live) and honestly, I covet the life that Katie Parla has.
Peasant food is often a subject of much disdain. In fact, it can conjure up a wide range of emotions and volumes have and could be written about the subject. I suppose the only two groups of people who don’t appreciate the genré are the people who were basically starving and had to fend and unadulterated food snobs.
Here we can see the term, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” come into play. Mostly, the term, peasant food, is associated with poor people who had access to meager quantities and qualities of foodstuffs, either in the toughest of times politically and economically or because they lived in places where there just wasn’t anything to source. They had to more or less invent and make due with little bits of this and that. In fact, what they did with what would seem as the most uninteresting of ingredients was to create some of the most treasured recipes ever. But for me, the term is warm and reminiscient.
It is so interesting that such great cuisine can be found at the lowest and highest ends of the spectrum. In fact, there is an entire collection of top chefs who have made, as part of their fundamental repertoire, to include iterations of classic peasant foods. Mario Batali would be just one. Most cultures have their own collection of recipes for peasant food and, truth be told, some of my all-time favorite recipes are for what you’d call peasant food. It could be said that the peasant food repertoire could be considered to be very closely aligned with the simple food, whole food, and even many recipes in the farm-to-table movements. After all, generally speaking, we are talking about simple, earthy ingredients, artfully combined. Ah, the things you can do with old bones, scraps of veggies, stale bread and an herb or two!
Every time you make a crostini, no matter how sophisticated the toppings, just think – this recipe evolved from stale bread and whatever was left in the kitchen one day.
Well, you may be wondering what Trastevere has to do with this. When I hear this word, I don’t think first about the very famous church there, nor the very controversial picture of Jesus, the stained glass or other treasures to be found there, or that George lost a pair of very expensive glasses in a cab on the way there last May – my mind goes first to Hunter-Style Chicken. My favorite meal in Trastevere was a lunch we had after visiting the famed Basilica, the Hunter-Style Chicken at Sabatini on the Piazza Santa Maria. Trastevere is a wonderful place to wander to, even if it is noted as being on the “wrong” side of the river. These days, I am not sure you would categorize Hunter Style Chicken as peasant food. Some would say that the availability of a chicken seems to me to be a bit higher up on the “food chain” of ingredients than most peasant food. However, you might consider that peasant food would include any dish that is “stretched” or conceived of with any or all left-over or less expensive ingredients so as to feed a larger group or last for more than one evening’s meal. It can belong in the category of one pot meals where a combination of seemingly random ingredients have made their way into a big pot. The possibilities are endless. After that lunch, I made it a point to sample the same recipe at other restaurants – it’s a classic of Rome.
Minestrone is one of those recipes that comes to mind in this regard – and Ribollita, where you could toss whatever leftover vegetables you might have into the soup pot. My all-time favorite peasant dish is my Mom’s recipe for Pasta Fassole, or Fagioli, which appears to be an acquired taste in the next generation at my house. But, I can tell you I would give anything to have a bowl of my Mom’s with her, just one more time. Peasant food seems to recall pleasant memories of childhood, at least for me. My Mom also made a baked Cannellini bean terrine of sorts with strips of bacon on top. I don’t have the recipe, but I’m going to look around.
I decided yesterday’s changeable and cool weather plus my yearning for Rome made for a good reason to make this dish. Hunter-Style Chicken, more affectionately known as Chicken Cacciatore, is one of those humble dishes that can be made a thousand different ways. I have usually been sticking to my Chicken Potentina, which is similar but made only with chicken thighs. This is one of those ubiquitous recipes often referred to as a peasant dish. Honestly, I think “peasant dishes” are among the best commentaries on a food culture as well as great to eat.
Anyway, as I said you can make this dish in a myriad of ways. Today, I made it this way:
HUNTER-STYLE CHICKEN – adapted from Mario Batali
one chicken, about 4 lbs, cut into 8 pieces
extra virgin olive oil
1 very large yellow onion or 2 medium, cut into rough chop
2 large red peppers, rough chop
1/4 cup chopped garlic
3 4″sprigs fresh rosemary
1/8 lb bacon, cubed or 4 0z pancetta
1 1oz pkg Baby Bella mushrooms, quartered
1 cup dry white wine
16 oz tomato puree
1 cup chicken stock
1 pinch red pepper flakes
salt and freshly ground pepper
Preheat enough extra virgin olive oil to cover the bottom of a large dutch oven on medium-high heat. Season both sides of chicken liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Brown chicken pieces on both sides, about 4 minutes per side. Remove from pan and reserve juices. Add onion, pepper, mushrooms, garlic , rosemary and bacon or pancetta to pan and cook over medium heat until soft and translucent and bacon has given up all of its fat, about 10 minutes. At this point you can remove half of the bacon pieces if you wish – I do as I don’t want a pronounced bacon flavor – just a background. Add the wine and reduce for 1 minute. Add the tomato puree and the chicken stock and stir to combine. Sprinkle in red pepper flakes. Return the chicken pieces and their juices to the pan and cook over low heat, covered for 20 minutes. Remove cover and simmer another 20 minutes. At this point you can set aside and reheat later.
Serve with Cauliflower Puree, crusty bread, a green salad and a crisp white wine or a Chianti.
Indefatigable – (from the yard yesterday):
pumpkin blossoms -self-seeded from last year’s Halloween pumpkins
they are so enjoyable now – like special treats each morning, hopefully until the frost
I’m a forager:
what should I do with these?