Pollo alla Cacciatora

Here is a delightful piece of Italian flavour for the cooler times of the year. Apparently, originally, this hunter's style dish was made without tomatoes, relying mostly on the chicken/rabbit, wine, mushrooms, herbs and probably olives (what Italian hunter in their right mind went out without olives and wine??). My take on the dish is decidedly un-Italian in its complexity and long list of ingredients but the result is unashamedly good curl-up-by-the-fire comfort food!

There is the option to make this as hot or as mild as you like. The mild option involves a mild Italian sausage and the seeds scraped out of the chilies; the hot option means a hot Italian sausage and seeds in the chilies; the very hot option would probably involve not frying the chilies and just throwing them straight into the pot with the olives etc. Just tweek this however suits your mood.

Also, I used chicky for this recipe, but I imagine it would be wonderful with rabbit. I shall try it with rabby later in the year!

INGREDIENTS:

Sauce:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion - finely chopped
• 5 cloves garlic - squished up
• 5 roma tomatoes
• 1 cup torn basil
• 1 tsp sugar
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 tbsp lemon juice

The rest of it:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 stalks of celery (you can dice/slice/chunk up these vegetables to whatever level of texture you like to have)
• 1 carrot
• 1 capsicum
• Red chilies (however many you dig)
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 6 chicken thighs (or, even better, just get a whole chook and cleave it into 8 pieces, with bones!)
• 2 field mushrooms
• 1 cup kalamata olives (pitted)
• 2 tsp capers (washed)
• 1 Italian cacciatore sausage (skin removed, sliced)
• Wedge of preserved lemon (washed)
• 1 cup white wine
• Oregano/Rosemary/Thyme (whatever you've got/like)
• Cannellini beans (I cheated and used a tin here - you can soak and cook if you're an organised bunny ;) )
• Some anchovy fillets (I didn't count - let's say between 6 and 8? or whatever you want)
• Fresh Italian parsley (a bunch, roughly chopped - yes that includes the stems. Why wouldn't you use the stems? The stems are delicious, delicious, delicious. DO it.)

METHOD:

Preheat your oven - about 180°C

Sauce:

1. Put the tomatoes under a hot grill until skin starts to blacken, then turn to do the other side, then remove from grill to cool. When cool enough, peel the skin off, remove the core and roughly chop.
2. Fry the onion with the oil in a lidded pan over a low heat - about 10 minutes or so.
3. Stir in garlic and basil, replace lid and fry for another few minutes
4. Add the tomatoes, sugar, wine, and lemon juice, replace the lid and simmer half an hour-ish (if anything starts to burn, your heat is too high; you should not need to caretake this process too much).
5. Pour the sauce into a big oven pot.

Other bits:

1. Add more oil to the same pan you just used and seal those chicky pieces to keep their juices intact. Once lightly browned on each side, add them to the oven pot with the sauce.
2. Straight into the same pan, add the capsicum, celery, carrot, bay and chili. Place a lid on the pan and turn it down to sweat the vege for a while and get the sweetness factor happening. After a few minutes, toss the mushroom though, take the lid off, and let it all fry a few minutes.
3. While this is happening, add all other ingredients except parsley straight into the oven pot.
4. Add the pan veges to the oven pot and gently toss the ingredients all around.
5. Get a lid on that baby and put her in the oven for a couple of hours.
6. Stir though the parsley just before serving with either crusty sourdough or polenta!
   

The meat should be absolutely tender and come away from the bone naturally (if you have boned pieces which I recommend).

Buon appetito! x x x