Chicken and Pepper Cacciatore : A Tasty Dish For Autumn

Chicken's many plus points - its versatility, as well as the ease and speed with which it can be cooked - make it one of the most popular meats around. It has a high level of good quality protein, as well as B vitamins, iron, copper and selenium.

Today's recipe suggestion is for Chicken and Pepper Cacciatore. Perhaps it’s probably best to start off by saying what cacciatore actually means, which will help shed some light on the dish’s origins.

Cacciatore means “hunter” in Italian, and it is hunters who first ate this dish. In fact, it is thought that the first Chicken Cacciatore was not made with chicken at all, but with rabbit or other wild game sometime during the Renaissance period, so between the 14th and 16th centuries.

Chicken Cacciatore’s simple but delicious recipe was likely developed to satisfy the appetites of hunters who may have been on the track of a larger animal or herd of animals for several days, and who needed a tasty, filling stew that could easily be cooked outdoors to keep them going.

The spices used, such as parsley and oregano, would have also been readily available to humble hunters. An interesting fact is that contrary to popular belief, Chicken Cacciatore did not originally contain tomatoes or tomato sauce, as tomatoes were brought to Italy from the New World later than it would have been made for the first time.

When making this dish with chicken, it is more traditional to use the dark meat, not the white meat, as it contains more fat and therefore helps make a thicker, tastier sauce when cooked than lean chicken breast would...

Ingredients:

Serves Four

3 tbsp. olive oil
2 red onions, cut into wedges
3 peppers (a mix of red, orange and yellow) de-seeded and cut into chunky strips
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1.5kg (3lbs) whole chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
800g (1 1/2lb) tinned cherry tomatoes
150ml (¼pt) hot chicken stock
pinch chilli flakes (optional)
2 sprigs rosemary, plus 1 tbsp. chopped rosemary, to serve
200g (7oz) pitted Kalamata olives

small handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, to serve

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to gas 6, 200°C, fan 180°C. Heat 2tbsp oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onions and peppers and fry for 3-4 minutes or until slightly softened. Add the garlic and fry for 1 more minute. Tip the onion and pepper mix into a large ovenproof dish, set aside.

2. Drizzle the chicken pieces with the remaining olive oil, season well, then fry in the frying pan until golden-brown all over. Put the chicken on top of the peppers and onions in the ovenproof dish.
3. Pour the tinned cherry tomatoes, stock and chilli flakes (if using) into a pan, season well and warm through over a low heat. Pour the sauce around the chicken pieces and vegetables, then add the rosemary sprigs and bake, covered with foil, for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the foil, scatter with the black olives and bake for another 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Cut into a thick section of the chicken to ensure it is cooked through with no pink showing.
5. Scatter with the chopped parsley and extra chopped rosemary, then serve.

Nutritional Details - each serving contains:

Carbohydrate 18.6g Protein 63.4g Fat 21g 

Taken from an idea here

Dear reader, this blog brings a variety of recipe ideas/suggestions, and not all may be suitable for you. If you may have any food allergies, or underlying health issues these must always be taken into account. If you are a diabetic and not sure how certain foods may affect your blood sugars, test is best, i.e. use your meter.

All the best Jan