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

Murgh Makhini (Butter Chicken)

Last week I had a hankering for butter chicken. While I go out for Indian regularly, I have not ordered butter chicken for many years as, upon arrival to my palate, it always disappoints. I find it overly rich and often lacking actual flavour. It was time to make the butter chicken I've always dreamed of - only I had no idea how!

After some recipe research, I was disappointed at the amount of what I would call lazy and lousy recipes. They tend to rely heavily on cream, sugar and salt and employ little in the way of spices. Gods forbid they include a vegetable! So I cobbled together a recipe prototype with a little (lot of) creative licence and gave it a whirl only to find the resulting dish 'nice'. 'Nice' just doesn't cut it. In fact, I strongly dislike 'nice'. Tonight I tweaked that prototype and came up with 'freaking delicious'. I enjoy 'freaking delicious'. Here it is:

(Keep in mind my measurements are estimated - I generally measure spices by sight as I store them in dark bottles and just tip them into my hand as I go. My advice when in doubt: go for more!)

INGREDIENTS:

• 5 chicken thighs (diced into medium sized chunks)
  

• 7 cloves garlic
• thumb-sized piece fresh ginger
• pinch salt
• 2 tsp Kashmiri chili powder (or paprika)
  
• 2 tsp tumeric powder
• tbsp rice bran oil

• 2 tsp corriander seed
• 2 tsp cumin seed
• 7 green cardamom pods
• 5 cloves

• tbsp ghee or butter
  
• 3 tsp cumin seed
• 1 tsp fenugreek seed
  
• 1 brown onion (diced)
• 4 large tomatoes (diced)
• 2-3 green chilies (chopped) (or however many of whatever kind you have on hand)
  
• 1 carrot (diced)
• 1/2 cup tamarind water
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup plain yoghurt
• 1/2 cup gram flour (chickpea flour)
• long twig of fresh curry leaves
• green vegetables of choice (I used a bunch of brocolini (chopped) and a cup or so of frozen baby peas)

PREPARATION

1. Marinade: Use a mortar and pestle to make a paste of the garlic, ginger and salt. Add the tumeric, Kashmiri chili powder and oil. Rub this into the chicky thighs. mmm yeah. Let the babies rest somewhere for an hour or so.
   
2. Tamarind Water: Put a good tablespoon or so of tamarind pulp in bowl with half a cup of boiling water and let it steep for a while, breaking up the pulp as much as possible. Strain all the watery goodness just before cooking.
   
3. Garum Masala: Dry fry the corriander, cumin, cardamom pods and cloves. Extract the seeds from the cardamom pods and throw away the shell. Pound all this up in a mortar and pestle to make a powder. Smells goooood!
4. Beat the gram flour into the yoghurt to make an incorporated paste and set aside.
   

COOKING

1. Seal pasty chicky thighs in two batches with a little extra oil if necessary in a hot pan. Once sealed, remove to a plate to await their next exciting role.
2. Add butter/ghee to same pan (hopefully with good brown flavour stuck to the bottom of the pan now). Quickly fry the remaining cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds then add the onion and turn down the heat before the flavour coating left over from the chicken starts to burn. If it's getting black fast, skip to the next step asap!
   
3. Deglaze the pot with the tomatos and tamarind water. Add the chili, carrot, garum masala, honey and cinnamon. Place a lid on the pot and simmer for a while (basically until the tomato starts to break down and the carrot is soft).
   
4. Remove your cinnamon quill. Get out your blitz stick (or use a blender) and blitz the shit outta that sauce. Smooooooth!
5. Replace your cinnamon quill. Add the sealed chicken, curry leaves and hot water. Simmer with a lid until the chicken is cooked though.
6. Add the yoghurt and gram flour combo attack and stir in the green veges. Another 5 minutes of simmer and you're THERE!

I don't tend to make Indian breads unless I'm entertaining so I just served mine with plain brown rice. It was fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. You can be fabulous too.