Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

My Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

There's something about the idea of spending a week in a villa in Tuscany that really appeals to me. The landscape looks beautiful, from rolling Italian countryside to the sandy beaches, the small medieval towns to the cities of Pisa and Florence, where I'd love to go sightseeing some day.

Having a villa would mean getting away from it all - I imagine a rustic farmhouse overlooking vineyards, sitting at a big wooden table with my husband as we tear into fresh bread and let a bottle of Chianti breathe.

I love the flavours from this region, from zingy lemons (and limoncello) to the earthy taste of truffles when they are grated over dishes. The red wines from this region are smooth yet spicy and Italian olive oil is renowned world wide.

I also like the simplicity of food from Tuscany. Pasta might just be served with a little oil and butter - when freshly made pasta is that good, why disguise it with a sauce? The best Tuscan food is locally produced and enjoyed according to the season; chicken is free range (probably wandering around the rustic farmhouse of my imagination) and mushrooms are foraged for.

There re two other things that stand out to be about Tuscan cooking. Food is about family, and typical dishes are prepared in large quantities to serve a big family around the kitchen table. It is also traditionally peasant cooking - in other words, cheap and not wasteful. Some of the best known Italian dishes are things that use cheaper cuts of meat, are bulked out with cannellini beans, use up stale bread (panzanella), and using local herbs and vegetables to bring out the natural flavours of the dish. These days rather than being something that is done through necessity, due to lack of money, this is something that many cooks aspire to - natural flavours coming through, cooking more economically and feeding a whole family with a robust, filling meal.

I was genuinely thinking of looking into booking a Tuscan villa for our holiday next year when I was invited to enter a competition run by To Tuscany, a website that specialises in villa rentals in that very region. It must be fate!

They asked me to create my own Tuscan-inspired recipe using typical flavours and influences from Italy, so I started to brainstorm a list of ingredients. I also thought about all the things I described above - cheaper cuts of meat, bringing out natural flavours, and a meal that could be cooked in large quantities if needed, and came up with this recipe for chicken cacciatora.

Cacciatora means 'hunter' in Italian and this is a kind of hunter's stew - perhaps something that would be waiting when they returned home from a day's hunt. It traditionally uses chicken, game or rabbit, and is cooked in a tomato-based sauce, sometimes with wine added, featuring onion and garlic, sometimes carrot or red peppers - there are various versions.

I decided to make mine even more Tuscan, if such a thing is possible, by making Chianti wine an important feature of the dish (Chianti is in Tuscany, if you didn't know). Italian olives stood out to me as a good addition, both for the colour that they give the dish and the different flavour and texture. I love balsamic vinegar and how it can bring out the flavour in dishes so decided to add a splash; my sauce was going to based on tinned tomatoes and the wine, with bay leaves and rosemary for flavour (and again they look great in the dish, though remove the bay leaf before serving).

Finally for a more modern, more indulgent twist, I sprinkled a little grated mozzarella on top of each chicken thigh just before serving, allowing it to melt - the cheese has a subtle taste but adds a little creaminess that is otherwise missing from the dish and to me just seemed to be the finishing touch. Serve the cacciatora with a hunk of fresh bread and a green salad - and the rest of the Chianti of course!

 

Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To serve four, you need:
4 large chicken thighs
pinch of salt salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1/2 bottle of Chianti
1 tbsp. olive oil
100g diced pancetta
2 bay leaves
sprig of rosemary
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
a large handful of green Italian olives
400g tinned tomatoes
generous dash of balsamic vinegar
pinch of smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
50g grated mozzarella

Season the chicken and marinade in the wine for at least one hour or overnight if possible.

 

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken, in batches if necessary, until browned. Add the pancetta to the pan and fry until starting to brown.

Preheat oven to 180C. Transfer the chicken and pancetta to an ovenproof dish with the wine marinade. Mix in the tomatoes, garlic, olives, bay leaf and rosemary. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of smoked paprika and the oregano and cover the pot with a lid.

 

 

Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours; for the last 10 minutes of cooking time add the grated mozzarella on top of the chicken.

 

Serve with green salad, fresh crusty bread and the chianti and enjoy.

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I want to win a week in one of your Tuscany villas!

Winter Slow Cooker Balsamic Beef

I bought some reduced-price stewing steak in the supermarket and thought it would work well in the slow cooker. I was going to chop the beef into cubes but it looked like a good quality piece of meat (or two pieces in fact) that I didn't think I needed to. I had been looking at a Slimming World recipe for beef in red onion gravy but as my other half doesn't like red onions I decided to change it and ended up pretty much making up my own recipe!

 

 

Slow Cooker Balsamic Beef - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

 

Serves 2

1 large shallot, sliced into two or three

400-500g braising steak

1 beef stock cube made up to 3/4 pint with hot water

1/4 tsp garlic puree or 1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

 

Mix the stock, garlic, tomato puree and vinegar and pour into your slow cooker. Place the onion pieces in the bottom and place the meat on top. Add more water if necessary so the beef is just covered.

 

 

 

 

Place the lid on your slow cooker and cook on high for about 2 hours or medium for 4 hours (mine has an auto setting that cooks on medium for 4 hours then keeps warm until I get home from work which is very handy).

 

 

Serve with veg and boiled or mashed potatoes.

 

 

 

This is a great second day dish as well if you cook enough for two but there is only one person eating it, as there was in my case.

 

For that reason I'm sending this to Cook Once Eat Twice hosted by Corinna at Searching for Spice.

 

Pissaladiere - Food 'n' Flix: A Good Year

This month's Food 'n' Flix challenge is hosted by Tina at Squirrel Head Manor and she has chosen the Russell Crowe film "A Good Year".  It's based on a book by Peter Mayle, who also wrote "A Year in Provence" and this story is also set in the same region. It's the story of Max, an investment banker and fairly unpleasant character, who inherits his uncle's house and vineyard in Provence. Going back there to sort out the details, and intending to sell the property, Max remembers the childhood summers he spent there, and meets a charming French woman, Fanny, played by Marion Cotillard. Their first meeting - where Max's careless driving knocks Fanny off her bike - makes her behave very coldly to him for some time (there is a very funny scene where Max falls into an empty swimming pool and Fanny helps him get out by filling it with water). But she eventually warms to him and unsurprisingly they fall in love. At the same time Max decides to keep the house and make a go of the vineyard, but a spanner is thrown into the works when his uncle's illegitimate daughter arrives, with her own claim on the estate. Of course, it all ends happily - you will just have to watch the film!

I decided to cook something from Provence in honour of this film. Pissaladière is a Provencal tart made using puff pastry and topped with slow cooked onions, olives, anchovies and herbs. I'm not really keen on anchovies so I decided to use anchovy paste in the recipe. I also don't really like olives either, but I did include them for authenticity!

It's pretty easy to make - first chop an onion and sweat it in a knob of butter and add 2 tbsp. brown sugar.

I used anchovy puree instead of anchovies; I rolled out a piece of puff pastry and thinly spread the puree on top. When the onions are softened, add 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar or 1/2 tbsp. balsamic glaze.

Spread the onion mixture on the puff pastry and top with some sliced olives.

Bake in the oven until the puff pastry is risen and golden. I love the sweetness that comes from the sugar and balsamic glaze.

I'm sending this to Food 'n' Flix as my recreation of a Provencale meal.

Lamb in Cherryade Glaze - Meal from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

I've recently come across the Food 'n' Flix blog challenge where a film is chosen every month and the participants cook something inspired by that film. I took part in January with the Hunger Games and was quite pleased with the meal from the film and book that I recreated.

This month's film, chosen by Tina from SquirrelHead Manor, is the Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. I'd seen the film before - in fact I have it on DVD - so I settled down one Sunday night to watch it again. There are only a few key food scenes but also lots of other little moments where you see people eating. When Andie and Ben first meet, they go out to dinner and eat lobster (which I am not going to attempt to cook!) and the other main food scene is when Ben cooks Andie dinner at his house. He makes an amazing rack of lamb with a cherry glaze... and Andie tells him she's vegetarian.

However, Heather - the brains behind this challenge -explained to me that the challenge doesn't only centre around recreating food that actually features in the film. She said: "You can draw inspiration from a town or a setting...from a memory or a reference...from a color or a building.  I see food in everything - usually where others do not.  Sometimes you have to draw inspiration from the tiniest of a spark.  What we head into the kitchen to make inspired by a film does not have to come directly from the screen."

I like the way she thinks - and as the film is all about dating, one way of approaching this challenge would be to cook a romantic meal suitable for a first date or special occasion - like this Valentine's day dessert here, or this New Year's eve meal here. Another way to approach it is taking the film's title literally.... When Ben cooks the lamb he doesn't know Andie is vegetarian (in fact she isn't, if you haven't seen the film this won't make much sense - she is writing a magazine column on how to drive a man away). Cooking something your date doesn't like never gets an evening off to a good start.... As I can confirm! I remember one of the first meals I cooked for my boyfriend was boeuf bourguignon, having checked in advance if he ate beef - but he probably thought I meant steak, as he really didn't like the boeuf bourguignon, and I also put onion and diced carrot in it, both of which he hates! And I think if I cook any more cakes with bacon in our relationship might be on shaky ground... I made these bacon brownies on the basis that sweet and salty flavours are supposed to work well together, but let's just say they didn't. And now whenever I present my boyfriend with a cake, he eyes it suspiciously and asks if it has got bacon in it! It's become something of a running joke so he probably thought I was kidding when I said I was going to make these Elvis cakes - but I did anyway, and they were very nice (though I gave him one without bacon!).

In the end however, I decided that rather than cook a romantic meal suitable for a date, or make something that would make my boyfriend want to dump me (or at least not eat dinner at my house again), I would stick to a faithful recreation from the film. Which left me with only one real option: the lamb in cherry glaze that Ben cooks for Andie. He uses a rack of lamb, which looks great, but as I was only making this for myself I decided it would be a bit much for one person. Also, I don't eat cherries, and had the idea of adapting the recipe to use some fizzy Cherryade that I had from another recipe.

I pretty much made it up as I went along; for the glaze you need:
half an onion
1 tsp dried sage
100ml red wine
100ml cherryade
1 tbsp Splenda sweetener/ 2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp cornflour

Chop the onion and sweat it in Fry-Light

Add the sage, then the red wine and bring to the boil

Add the cherryade and simmer until the mixture starts to thicken

I decided to strain the sauce to remove the onion, which I kept to one side, then used a little cornflour to thicken the sauce a little more. Finally add a splash of balsamic vinegar.

I was in too much of a hurry to eat and served the sauce before it had properly thickened. I oven cooked the lamb, served the onion from the sauce on the side, and had this with roasted new potatoes and vegetables (which I was too impatient to eat to photograph!). The sauce had a lovely flavour and was perfect with the lamb. The leftover sauce that I had left in the pan (though not on the heat) had thickened beautifully by the time I had finished my dinner, but I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it!

I'm hosting this challenge in August and have already picked out the film I'm going to use - When Harry Met Sally. It's a very foodie-theme - and I don't just mean the 'I'll have what she's having' scene! Check out the main Food n' Flix page to see the other challenges in the meantime.