Weeknight Dinner: Chicken Cacciatore

Weeknight Dinner has been a keystone of Urban Home Blog since its beginning. As with many of us, I figured out weeknight dinner as part of early homekeeping, when the reality hit that someone was going to have to get something to eat on the table. When I started writing Urban Home Blog, I had been a homekeeper and therefore a dinner-fixer for years. I had a library of recipes, techniques, and dishes to share in service to getting a good meal on the table during busy school- and work weeks. The elements of weeknight dinner include being good to eat and relatively simple to prepare, while navigating the fault line between being just another plate of same ole same ole but not being so novel that it's worthless.

In our urban home, the library of weeknight dinners is the result of learning to cook, both technique and cuisine. Dinnertime is Home Ec 101, but the practice is ongoing, as the realities of the household intercede while the skills and interests of the home cook evolve. I learned early that weeknight dinner is best made from pantry ingredients. A well-stocked pantry is vital to every household; even in households where no one cooks, there will at least need to be coffee, cereal, and milk. I learned to plan for the week before doing the weekend grocery shopping, augmented by a quick grocery stop midweek. I learned to keep fresh lettuces for simple side salads so that however rushed it is, the weeknight table doesn't exclude fresh vegetables. I learned to always have staples, such as eggs and cheese for omelets, on hand for nights when the energy, the errands, or the evening gets away from us. Our go-to meal for those nights is pasta puttanesca, which takes very little time or effort to prepare but, truly in the spirit of the dish, is even more satisfying when one's energy is drained.

Weeknight dinner emerges from Grandma's Kitchen as a bowl of New England Clam Chowder served with cream cheese biscuits, or as a big gloppy serve of chicken rice casserole. Weeknight dinner encompasses light and easy teriyaki, autumnal cider chicken or apples and roast pork, lively chicken soup with pickled jalapenos. Weeknight dinner is burger night whether turkey or green chile and steak night whether Diane or London. It is a savory salmon dinner served with baby potatoes and olive relish or a quick chicken stir fry tumbled over white rice. It is a towering California omelet, a succulent Cobb Salad, an earthy risotto with mushrooms. There is plenty of pasta and pizza, usually there are cocktails or wine, and often there is dessert.

Here is the second of slow-cooker recipes for our February of Weeknight Dinners: hunter's stew Italian style.

While the slow cooker is a modern convenience, cooking slowly in one pot is as fundamental to cooking as the hearth itself. Long slow cooking in one pot links today's busy-household slow cooker with the hearth, for they both address the same need: getting something to eat on the table at the end of a long day. From hearth to the countertop, nothing is more suited to slow cooking than stews.

Stews are among our earliest foods, and they are found in nearly every culture's cooking. Abuelita's posole is as much a firmament of American cooking as is Grandma's kitchen sink pot roast. In European cooking, several related dishes share the signature of "hunter style;" a stew that cooked all day, colloquially during the hunt or in celebration of it. Accordingly, hunter style often contains game, and foraged ingredients. Local ingredients, techniques, and traditions give each hunter's stew a character that embodies something about the culture through its cooking.

While each recipe has formalized into some commonalities, part of the spirit of a hunter's stew is that it seems, at least a little bit, thrown together kitchen to kitchen, hearth to hearth. Polish bigos is made from pork and sausage, and from there may include everything from mushrooms to cabbage to plums. Far from rarefied gourmet dining, coq au vin comes from the fireplaces of French farmhouses, where it was a way to memorialize a rooster that was past his prime. Just across The Alps, an Italian hunter's stew is pieces of chicken or rabbit simmered in tomatoes and peppers. Here is my original recipe for making chicken cacciatore in the slow cooker. It is as suitable for a lazy Sunday as for a busy weeknight. Serve it with pasta tossed with butter or olive oil, plain white rice, or a loaf of crusty bread.

Chicken Cacciatore
To learn about the slow cooker we use in our urban home, click here. Make sure the slow cooker is set to switch to warm once the cooking time has elapsed.

1-1/2 pounds bone-in, skinless chicken thighs
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup dry red wine
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup sliced onion
1 red bell pepper, seeded, pithed, and cut into strips
1 green bell pepper, seeded, pithed, and cut into strips
1/2 pound fresh cremini or white button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 sprigs fresh oregano
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 dried bay leaf
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Season the chicken
The night before

• Pat the chicken pieces dry with paper towels. Sprinkle the pieces on both sides with salt and several grindings of fresh black peppers. Place the pieces in a covered dish or plastic bag and refrigerate overnight.

Make the Cacciatore

8 hours before serving

1. Drizzle the inside of the cooking vessel of the slow cooker with a five count of olive oil. Use a pastry to coat the inside of the vessel.
2. Remove the chicken from the refrigerator. Nestle the chicken on the oiled surface of the slow cooker.
3. Season the chicken with several grindings of fresh black pepper. Place the bay leaf, rosemary, and oregano on the chicken.
4. Add the onion, red pepper strips, and green pepper strips to the slow cooker so that they sit atop the chicken.
5. Drizzle the onion-pepper mixture with a three-count of olive oil and 1 teaspoon salt.
6. Scatter the mushrooms over the onion-pepper mixture.
7. Measure the tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and wine into a large measuring cup with a spout. Use a whisk to blend the sauce until the paste breaks up and the wine is incorporated. 
8. Carefully pour the sauce into the slow cooker. Gently use a wooden spoon or silicon spatula to turn all of the ingredients together, just until the sauce coats all of the ingredients. Keep the chicken towards the bottom of the cooker.
9. Place the cover on the slow cooker and set to cook for 8 hours on low.

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