Erica De Mane

A chicken-and-red-pepper yoga map.

Recipe below: Chicken alla Cacciatora My Way

What exactly is pollo alla cacciatora, anyway? Or chicken cacciatore, as we always called it? The hunter’s wife’s dish. My family made it a lot, always in a Southern Italian style, but it can be many things, depending on the region. My mother, a hunter of fine nail colors, made hers with tomato, red wine, and red bell peppers, adding a little garlic, and often including dried oregano. This, I assumed, was a Campanian or Puglian version, from where we come from. I never liked it. There was something harsh there. In our family, it was mostly a winter dish, so the bell peppers were supermarket-bought, not from my father’s garden. They lacked sweetness and were maybe a bit acidic. It’s funny. I love red sweet peppers—peperonata amazes me—but I’m not crazy about them mixed with tomatoes, I think that brings out their underlying sharpness. And dried oregano slow cooked in a braise, as it is here, gives off a musty note. Southerners and their dried oregano. I still don’t understand it. Sorry, Mom. I loved almost everything you made, but chicken cacciatore not so much. I occasionally prepare it her way, just for a taste of childhood, but I ditch the oregano and add fresh basil at the end. An improvement.

Tomato-and-sweet-pepper cacciatore is the version that usually came to this country. Every Italian family I knew made it that way. But in Naples and vicinity, where many Italian Americans are from, it’s unusual. Generally speaking, the Southern cacciatora almost always means chicken braised with rosemary, white or red wine, and tomatoes. And in all the Naples and Campania cookbooks I have (and I have a lot), I don’t see a sweet pepper version, except, and this is an interesting exception, in Sophia Loren’s surprisingly good cookbook, In the Kitchen with Love. Her pollo alla cacciatora contains red bell peppers and tomatoes and is pretty much like my mother’s. Sophia grew up minutes away from Naples, but no Rrosemary here. My mother didn’t use rosemary either. Sophia uses basil. So I guess both ways have a history. I also wonder if the sweet pepper version may not have originated in neighboring Calabria, where they use lots of peppers, both sweet and hot, and then maybe travelled around the south (there’s so much culinary overlap in those regions) before crossing the sea to land in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, its final resting place.

Chicken alla cacciatora is not just a Southern dish. I’m guessing its name originated in Tuscany or Umbria, where they’re big hunters. Neapolitans were more into foraging. The central Italian versions almost always contain rosemary, too, and may or may not use tomatoes. I’ve never seen a Central Italian cacciatore with sweet peppers. Mushrooms, yes.

And, getting to the chicken component, I doubt many of my ancestors had the luxury of eating a chicken dinner ever, or possibly once or twice on special occasions. Maybe a chicken could be killed if someone was gravely sick, for broth, for protein. But mostly it would be saved for its eggs. I would guess the preparation was more often done with rabbit, or goat in some regions, and then evolved when chickens became easier to part with. I think cacciatore really took off for Mezzogiorno people when they got here, to the land of abundance and waste.

I make cacciatore in various ways, sometimes with wild mushrooms and no tomatoes. I also love it simply with white wine, a little garlic, and a lot of fresh herbs—sage, thyme, fennel fronds, parsley. But maybe my favorite version is the more or less classic one with just wine (I like using dry vermouth), tomatoes, and rosemary.

Chicken alla Cacciatora My Way

(Serves 4)

4 chicken legs, separated into thighs and drumsticks (or use all thighs)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
A ¼-inch-thick round of pancetta, chopped
2 shallots, cut into small dice
1 or 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 or 4 juniper berries, lightly crushed
½ teaspoon ground allspice
1 bay leaf, preferably fresh
4 large sprigs rosemary, the leaves well chopped
4 ounces dry vermouth
¾ cup good chicken broth
6 canned San Marzano tomatoes, drained and then well chopped
A handful of Gaeta olives, pitted if you like

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces. Get out a large skillet with a lid, and set it over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil, and let it get hot. Add the chicken, and brown it well on both sides. Remove it from the pan.

If you’ve got a lot of fat in the pan, drain some off. Next, still over medium heat, add the pancetta, and let it get crispy. Add the shallots, and let them soften. Add the garlic, juniper berries, allspice, bay leaf, and rosemary, and cook them briefly to release their fragrances. Return the chicken to the pan. Add the vermouth, and let it bubble for about a minute. Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes, and turn the chicken pieces around a few times to distribute all the flavors. Let it all come to a boil.

Turn the heat to low, cover the pan, and simmer until the chicken is just tender, about 20 minutes. You’ll want to turn the pieces over once or twice during the cooking. Add the olives in the last few minutes. Turn off the heat, and let the chicken sit, covered, for about 10 minutes. That will help mellow all the flavors and let the chicken continue to cook through gently to tender.

Taste the sauce, and add more salt, pepper, or other seasonings until it tastes rich but also bright. If the sauce is kind of loose, you can remove the chicken pieces, boil down the liquid to reduce it, and then pour it back over the chicken.

Serve with good bread.