Pan Roased Chicken with Garlic, Rosemary and White Wine

When Marcella first sat down in the early 1970s to write her first Italian cookbook, I understand the first recipe she documented was this one. Possibly 55 years later, we cooked it for dinner. It is lovely! It's so different from dishes that look similar - like the Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Garlic, or the Fricasseed Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic, Rosemary and Olives. I think perhaps it's the butter which changes things. 

Anyway, it was delicious. 

We cooked it with green beans with butter and parmeson (also from Essentials), and roast potatoes with rosemary (Giuliano has this in his How to Cook Italian, as I recall). 

Give it a go. 

Chicken Fricassee with red cabbage

I have posted about this before - 16 years ago or thereabouts. 

It's such a delicious dish. I think some of the smells attracted a four legged stranger into the house. 

Marcella commented on my cooking when she heard I struggled getting the garlic bright gold before I burned the onion. In September 2010 (15 years ago) she said: 

David's cooking, as always, can be mystifying

I miss her.

Chicken Fricassée with porcini mushrooms, white wine and tomatoes

 

Lovely. Was worried about liquid quantity - 2 cups, for rehydrating mushrooms. I wonder if she puts that much in in later recipes for porcini. But I reduced it at the end, as instructed. Delicious sauce. Earthy. Some grit. Will wash better next time. 

I see Giuliano Hazan has a different version in his How to Cook Italian (this is from Essentials), so I will try that another time. 

Marcella has another in Says I think, or Cucina. 

Chicken and two lemons

A Marcella Hazan classic. I think it took me some time to get my head around this dish. But I love it now. It's so simple (which as Marcella reminded us, does not mean easy). My favourite dishes are those with the fewest ingredients, and Marcella points out that if the ingredients were a still life painting it would be just that: a chicken and two lemons. 

Even better if you can grow your own lemons. And maybe even your chicken...

Sautéed Fillets of Breast of Chicken with Lemon and Parsley, Siena Style

I've eyed this dish off for a while. I think early on I attempted it, but the cooking time seemed really off - less than a minute for a chicken breast. 

I paid more attention this time - it's filleted chicken breast, to mimic veal scallopini. So a flash in the pan more or less. 

Unfortunately, I only worked that out after I filleted my breasts - and they were monstrous breasts too. Birds these days.... So the fillets were at least twice as thick as they should have been - possibly more. 

I had to cook them for longer until they reached a cooked temperature (around 75C). I added some water and put the lid on to do this, then simmered the water away and continued with the recipe. 

It cooled quickly - I really need the warmed serving platter for next time. 

But the sauce was lovely, buttery and lemony, even if the chicken was a bit dry and chewy because of the size of it and cooking time. The presentation was beautiful.

I'll have another crack at this. 

Fricassed chicken with onions

This is another recipe from Marcella's Italian Kitchen, the book that Marcella appears to be most fond of, but which slipped through to the keeper from the public's perspective. You don't hear of it much, relatively speaking.

I find it to be perhaps the most personal of her books. While her first two books defer to the classics, you get the sense she is letting her hair down here, playing in the kitchen. She also seems content, and refers happily to her son and his antics.

I have eyed this recipe off for a while. I bought the ingredients for it several times, but deferred the execution as it takes a couple of hours to come together. The technique certainly results in some tasty onion - you could do a lot with that, the onion. I think I prefer it to the onion Marcella makes for her onion pasta from Essentials. Just put the onions in the pan with some olive oil, wait an hour and then season and lightly brown it. Perhaps put some parsley with it and what a delicious pasta sauce. Or fritatta base. It could be used anywhere really.


But in this case it is used to fricassee a chicken - my preferred way to cook a chicken, although my standout favourites are to use garlic, rosemary and white wine (possibly with cherry tomatoes and olives) or red cabbage (with mash). How many ways do you need I wonder?

I felt a bit like Colonel Sanders browning the chicken in flour. It was really a form of frying with all the vegetable oil.

But in it went. I was concerned that there wasn't enough liquid, although some seemed to appear from the chicken over time. The onions also stuck to the bottom of the pan a couple of times, perhaps because they were so sweet I don't know, but that was something to watch for.

The end result was sweet. Really really sweet. Of course, my dining companion was in heaven, as she loves all sweet things. I must admit I gave it a good bash, although I have less of a sweet tooth. It is quite incredible to think all that sweetness comes from the onions. If you did not cook, who would think that onions could be so sweet?

I do not think I will make this one again, although I may be encouraged to.

Split chicken with herbs and white wine

This dish is from Marcella's Italian Kitchen, which is perhaps the least well known of her books, as far as I can tell from the internet. It seems to hold a special place in Marcella's heart though, as you get the feeling that she feels it never got the recognition it deserved, and contains some of her favourite recipes. She certainly seems happy in it, and free perhaps of some of the constraints she may have felt documenting the classic Italian in her first two books.

I was going to cook the chicken with onions from this book, but to be honest I got lazy and noticed that I had everything for the split chicken. The most fun part was chopping the chicken in half and then bashing the crap out of it with the chicken pan to flatten it.

I was then able to brown the chicken and let its skin go really crispy.

The recipe was a little different to other Marcella chicken recipes. There were unusual (for Marcella) ingredients, like cloves, and there were also quite a few herbs, which Marcella usually cautions us against. Other things that were different were that the garlic was not browned at all, the wine was not reduced at the start, and the heat was set to medium instead of low.

As usual for this sort of thing the sauce got really really tasty. The recipe called for the clear fat to be poured down the sink and I did that wistfully as I love mopping it up. But I did it. The final stage is to bake it in the oven for 10 minutes to get a parmesan cheese crust.

The result was a solid chicken, but I love other Marcella fricasseed chickens so much that when the sauce almost disappears I am not as happy. To me it was more like a baked chicken that hinted of a fricasseed chicken with sauce. The cheese didn't really do much for me.

So I don't think I'll be making this one again. My favourite Hazan chickens are: chicken with red cabbage (Essentials), and chicken with rosemary, white wine, tomatoes (Cucina). I'm also fond of baking the chicken with rosemary and garlic, which is also in Essentials but I use the recipe from Giulian Hazan's How to Cook Italian (which is very similar).

Other recipes I have tried but prefer less are two lemons (Essentials), rosemary and white wine (Essentials) and Bay Leaves (Cuscina).

Next time I'll try the chicken with smothered onions (and mash).

Tomatoes stuffed with Salmon and Fricassed Chicken with Cabbage

I'm back to Marcella tonight. The old master returns.

For a first course we had baked tomatoes stuffed with salmon, parsley, capers, olive oil and breadcrumbs. This is a recipe from Marcella Cucina. I made the breadcrumbs fresh, as I do now.

I've made these little blighters before. I had two halves. I think I preferred the smaller one, which means that I think I like them a bit crunchier. I'm not sure if this is because I'm not a great salmon fan.

I want to make these again cooking them say for another 5 or 10 minutes over the 35.

Visually they were very attractive.

For our second course, we had the Fricasseed Chicken with Red Cabbage, served with Italian potato mash. This is probably the best dish of Essentials so far for me and I have written about it on this blog before. It is truly delicious, and is my winter fricasseed chicken (summer being the white wine rosemary tomatoes and olives from Cucina). Every little scrap of it and its sauce was devoured by the three of us.

I'm pleased to report I used a little nutmeg and parmesan in my mash and it is growing on me. I think I use less butter and salt this way so it all works out.

PS - I wanted to point out I browned the chicken in the same pan I cooked it in. The only difference was I poured out most of the chicken fat (not all!) as there was so much. Worked perfectly.

Fricasseed Chicken Abruzzi Style with Rosemary, White Wine, Cherry Tomatoes, and Olives

This is my favourite Hazan dish so far. In fact I think it's my favourite dish that I can cook.

I've enjoyed it for a couple of years. It is so simple, and so easy, and yet so delicious when done right. You need to make sure you have the right pan for these fricasseed dishes (heavy), and the best free range chicken, olives, rosemary and garlic you can find.

After a few goes you won't need to look at the recipe at all.

I particularly love mopping up the juices (goodness) with some crusty bread, and having a bite of cherry tomato, olive and chicken all at once.

When serving for guests I make this a second course which follows a pasta and precedes fruit.

It's from Marcella Cucina.

Fricasseed Chicken with Walnuts

I think I've really cracked this fricasseed approach to birds and little beasts. It's really just cooking the blighters on the stove in some liquid until they are tender. You brown them, brown some garlic if you like, add whatever herbs or spices you like, and braise them in wine (deglazing the pan and letting the alcohol pass) or tomatoes or both with some salt. You can also add anything else to the pan you have available and think would be tasty - olives, cherry tomatoes, peas, chopped potatoes or sweet potatoes, or even nuts as I've done here.

I used walnuts because I had a jar. I just coarsely pounded a couple of handfuls and threw them in. I also used red wine because I had some, and rosemary from the garden and a bay leaf. I think the walnuts added their own flavour, and the sauce was very popular.

It did not elicit moans of pleasure like these dishes sometimes can, and I guess that's where 30 years of experience comes in, but it was a tasty lunch using what was in the house, which was not much.

Fricasseed Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon Juice

I consider myself quite proficient at fricasseed chicken, Hazan style. My favourite Hazan dish is fricasseed chicken with olives and cherry tomatoes from Marcella Cucina. Coincidentally, it is also made with rosemary, garlic and white wine, just like this dish.

Marcella's fricasseeing technique is different between her books, and it shows in the results. The garlic is not put in this dish until the chicken is browned, and no reference is made to it when Marcella refers to the next 2-3 minutes of cooking. This cooking surely must be all about the garlic browning, but it doesn't end up browning as much as it does in the olive dish, and as a result the dish is less pronounced from a garlic perspective.

Similarly this dish has a sprig of rosemary, rather than 2 full chopped tablespoons. Rustic perhaps but again less pronounced from a rosemary perspective.

Finally, Marcella does not drain the fat from the olive chicken before it is served. I suspect she drains almost all the fat/wine mixture (or goodness as it is known in some circles) from this dish to due to the low fat insanity of the 1980s/1990s. Marcella was under a lot of pressure at that time from the increasingly large Americans to reduce the fat in her (mediterranean) dishes and she says that was one of the drivers in Essentials.

As a result there is a lot less lemony sauce - which is the star of this little number - than you would like. You really have to poke around to find it. If I made this one again I think I would ignore the detail of the Essentials method and just squeeze a little lemon juice into the sauce (sorry, fat/wine) at the end. This would mean the garlic and rosemary contribute more and there is more goodness to share and mop up with crusty bread in the Italian fashion.

All things considered I don't think I will make this one again though. Not with the siren call of the olives and cherry tomatoes in the background....

Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Garlic

To be honest I skipped a generation to Marcella's son's recipe from How to Cook Italian. It's basically the same, except where it comes to attending the chicken. Giulano says you should cook for 30 mins per half kilo, and have the chook upside down for the first third. Fair enough. The rosemary and garlic are not piled on, and the final chicken does not taste strongly of either. Instead it is just a delicious, moist roast chook. I had it with a lot of boiled cauliflower finished with olive oil, salt and pepper (thanks Neil) and roast pumpkin, also with garlic and rosemary. All very good, although a certain someone made up some gravox gravy when I wasn't looking...

This will become my standard roast chook. I (gasp) prefer it to Marcella's chicken and two lemons.

Chicken cacciatore (New Version)

This dish looked boring to be honest, as it doesn't have much in it, and I worried it was just going to be a limp tomatoey effort. In the end I was pleased. Its simple flavours were comforting, if not astounding, and as a couple of people dropped in I cooked Neil Perry's Bucatini All'Amatriciana (Bacon Pasta) as a first course, and it all went well together with a bottle of nice white. Troubles were eased, and I will make this again.

Chicken Fricassee with Red Cabbage

You know, Marcella isn't lying when she says that Italian food is often unattractive. I mean, just look at the above. But then she also says she cooks for flavour, and in this case I can attest to it. Who would have thought that half a red cabbage, simmered with some onion, garlic and red wine, would form a beautiful sauce for a tender chicken? Well that's what we have here.

As usual you need to start with your ingredients.



Next thing is to cook the onions and the garlic. I've had trouble before with the onions getting too brown before the garlic does. That sounds strange as it is usually the other way around but there you go. I think the way to get around this is to have the heat down pretty low for quite a while. 

Eventually it will look like this. If you burn either the onion or the garlic then throw it all out and start again.

In goes the cabbage.

The cabbage takes 40 or 50 mins. Again, low heat means you won't burn it. You don't want to burn it. Because this dish takes two hours I sometimes cook the cabbage the night (or morning) before I cook the chicken. 

Of course to cook the chicken you need to be able to cut a chicken up.

First thing you need is a good chicken. Buy a free range one - the most expensive you can. And you need a sharp knife. Buy a good one and a sharpener. 

There we go. Easy with a sharp knife. Of course, if you are a good cook you will use the carcass for stock. If you are lazy you give it to the cat.

Either way you then need to wash, dry and brown it. 

So it looks like this. Let it sit while browning Don't stir and stir. A few minutes each side should do it.

After 40 or 50 mins the cabbage was tasting pretty bloody good. So I added my chook and the wine and I was away. I didn't add the breast until the last 10 mins as you can see below. This is the first time I held it out - so it doesn't dry - but to be honest I don't notice it when it's left in. 

In the end it tasted great and looked like a mess. Or as Marcella says, a dense, clinging sauce on your tender chicken. 

I've served this before with crusty bread, it is a treat. Today I was brave and cooked polenta. The chicken was fabulous and tender, the sauce was wonderful. The potenta was a bit crap but that's another story. 

Next time I think I"ll cook it with mash.

Definitely a keeper. 

UPDATE: I've since made it with proper mash and it is fantastic. Forget that polenta crap.