Chicken-ey, tomato-ey, fresh herby and last but not least, HEALTHY. All the good-ey’s. Another of my go to classics for meat eaters. You pretty much throw it all in a pot (nicely) and wait for it to cook. DELICIOUS!
This is not something I eat myself, but it is something that my husband loves – Chicken Cacciatore. Cacciatore means hunter in Italian and this is definately a classic Italian dish.
Rich tomatoey sauce, with hints of red wine, capers, rosemary and a teeny weeny bit of chilli, it’s a really sumptuous dish to serve up to meat eaters, especially in winter.
I use free range chicken and can assure you that it does make for a much nicer dish. The rosemary I cut straight from my garden, so it’s about as fresh as you can get and for the red wine I tend to use a darker red, such as a merlot, as I think it gives real body to the dish. But, feel free to use any red wine, as long as it’s not too sweet!
If you prefer to use fresh tomatoes feel free to do so, I use tinned tomatoes because I like that they give a very syrupy consistency to the sauce surrounding the chicken, but freshly chopped tomatoes would give a lovely flavour and consistency also.
Serve it up with crusty bread or with couscous or rice.
Enjoy!
- 6 free range, organic chicken thighs, de-boned and skin off
- 100 g tinned tomatoes
- 1 Tbsp capers
- 1 celery stick, chopped into cubes
- 1 carrot, peeled and chopped into cubes
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- ¼ glass red wine
- 1 knob olive oil spread/butter
- 150 ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 2 Tbsp flour
- ½ tsp chilli flakes (optional)
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 sprigs fresh rosemary (no twigs)
- Add ½ teaspoon salt to the flour and then lightly dust each side of the chicken thighs in the flour.
- Put a knob of butter into a heavy based sauce pan and melt.
- Brown the chicken all over and remove from the pan.
- Add celery, carrot, rosemary and garlic to the same pan and cook until browned (1 minute).
- Add the wine and reduce down making sure to scrape all of the bits from the bottom of the pan.
- Add the tomato and the stock and stir.
- Add the chicken back to the pot and cover with a heavy lid.
- Cook on a low heat for 40 minutes.
- Add the capers. chilli (optional) and season with salt and pepper.
- Cook for a further 5 minutes then serve with crusty bread or mash.
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