Traditional Chicken Cacciatore Recipe from Maureen…is a wonderful thing.

Traditional Chicken Cacciatore from Maureen

This Traditional Chicken Cacciatore recipe from Maureen permeated my house and brought my kids in, just to see why it smelled so amazing.

A few weeks ago. I was making a newly published recipe on Allrecipes.com when Maureen, a friend in my local community reached out to me via Facebook about the recipe I was working on. We had some great interactions about the photo of the recipe I posted and learned a few things about a Cacciatore. I’m all about learning something new because…well it’s about food of all things. Which it also enriched me about the food culture per-say. After she examined the recipe I was working on, Maureen said, it wasn’t one of those tried and true Cacciatore recipes but thought it be a decent Italian style recipe. However, she said, because it was baked, should be re-named “Cacciatore al Forno” which means ”Cacciatore in the oven” and normally over the stove. Now I know something new. The recipe I was working on did turn out well and the kids ate on it for 2 days. Since I had all 5 of my kids home plus my daughter’s boyfriend over. It feed them well.

After Maureen and I started PMing back and forth on Facebook, she says she has a recipe for me and didn’t want to post to the photo I was doing but wanted to share. And Boy did I want it. Maureen stated that in Italy they serve it traditionally with polenta or with bread. So I wanted to stay true as possible to her Traditional Chicken Cacciatore recipe and I was completely up to the challenge. And I loved the fact she stated “My heritage is northern Italy so I serve it with polenta instead of pasta, and of course bread. Bread to an Italian is just another utensil.” Heck yeah!! That’s soo up my alley for sure.

Upon privately messaging me, we had the most amazing conversation about her love of Italy and some of her back roots up in the Northern part of Italy. We talked about the long dinners with loads of conversations. Dinner could start at 8 and dessert wouldn’t be served until Midnight. We talked about how her Grandparents are from around Genoa and she still has life long friends living over there. Then more talks of traveling and adventures. SO I kindly asked if I could share her Traditional Chicken Cacciatore recipe on my blog after I made her recipe. She sweetly said yes.  I add a few comments of changes I made but they were extremely little. Only because the beginning cooks always needs a base of measurements. And after learning then by all means eyeball things.

Maureen’s recipe states about using a whole chicken. I am horrible at times when it comes to breaking a chicken down just because sometimes the strength is my enemy. I am linking a great “how to” video of breaking a chicken down. But in my case, I chose to use about 5 small leg & thigh quarters to make up the difference to a whole chicken.

Another great thing to do is gather all your ingredients, get the prep work out of the way, stage all the ingredients into vessels and ready yourself to start cooking. This easily makes the progress of cooking a lot faster, especially when you have multiple ingredients and you want to dedicate yourself into doing justice to a recipe that is near and dear to someone else. As I did below

Cut veggies, herbs & spices, liquids measured and ready to be utilized.

Then during the process of making this Traditional Chicken Cacciatore recipe, my ever so crazy child, had to come in and be like “mom, I’m so excited, when is it going to be DONE?!” Another child came down asked what I was making, so when I said it was a Traditional Chicken Cacciatore recipe, she said, “Chicken caught…what?!” I was giggling so bad. It was rather funny, when I was telling her to pronounce it, Chicken Catch-a-Tori. And proceeded to ask, who’s Tori? Well….there’s that of course. I told her, “we aren’t catching anyone but rather the chicken when it’s served on the plate. LOL my kids sometimes…are super funny.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 whole chicken bone-in,skin on and each breast cut in half for smaller pieces
• salt & pepper to taste (keep it near, you will need add S&P through out)
• 2 TBSP fresh oregano finely chopped
• 2-3 TBSP olive oil
• 8 ounces fresh mixed mushrooms like crimini and shiitake
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 bell peppers preferred 1 red & 1 yellow
• 2 small carrots peeled & sliced
• 5 cloves garlic shaved or sliced extra thin
• 1/2 cup Kalamata olives whole
• 2-3 sprigs fresh Thyme
• 1 cup white dry wine
• 1 cup chicken broth or stock
• 1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1 14 oz can small whole tomatoes
• 1 tsp salt & pepper tsp of both
• 1 tsp fresh basil chopped
• Fresh Italian Parsley chopped for garnish

DIRECTIONS:
Remove chicken from package, empty the chicken’s cavity (liver, heart, gizzard & neck). Rinse chicken off with cool water, pat dry. Make sure your cutting boards and area is clean when working with chicken. Follow through with watching the helpful video on how to break down a chicken properly. *** I chose for this recipe to use leg & thigh pieces about 4-5 small pieces will do.

• Season chicken with salt, pepper and sprinkled fresh chopped oregano on both sides.
• Heat a heavy cast iron skillet, drizzled with olive oil. Place chicken skin side down and do not move it until it reaches a deep golden brown and it’s easy to turn, brown other side for a few minutes. Remove chicken and set aside.
• Add vegetables (mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, carrots, garlic and olives). Sprinkle lightly with salt & pepper or to taste, with a few twigs of thyme, sauté for 5 minutes.
• Add wine and let it reduce, about 1/4th to 1/2 the liquids.
• Add chicken broth and tomatoes. Toss in 1 teaspoon of each salt, pepper & fresh chopped basil. Place the chicken back into the pan and sink into the juices. Simmer on low, stove top, for a couple of hours or until chicken falls off the bone. Uncovered. ***I did cover my process because it was splattering a little bit.
• Serve over fresh creamy polenta or with bread. Garnish with fresh parsley.

It’s a wonderful and amazing dish. My husband and daughters are a fan. I had my only son, not partake in trying the recipe as I knew this going in he won’t but did say it smelt good. If I had cut away the skin and bones, minced all the veggies and removed the olives….he would probably tried, can’t fault him at all with his gag reflex disorder , he will try most things. However…he loved the polenta that I served with it and grabbed another protein when we all had prednisone dinner.

By and By…this will be a total repeat offender in my house. And It was quite simple and easy to make. You also might see future recipes down the line from Maureen. A big shout out to her as I owe this new recipe liking to her.

#SimpleAnd RusticItalianRecipes #ChickenCacciatoreRecipe #ItalianRecipes #TradtionalItalian