The mystery of Roman cuisine is this: the digestibility of the dish is inversely proportional to the heat. Ergo: In mid-August when temperatures are damn hot, what is better than a nice plate of chicken with peppers?
This is the traditional ferragostan lunch dish, like the other beach classic in the 80s: the sandwich with omelette that made you stay sweaty at least three hours under the umbrella instead of being able to taking a bath!
The traditional recipe called for sweet green peppers but for some twenty years they have been impossible to find and are therefore replaced with yellow and red peppers, like the colors of the town’s flag.
The recipe I have is taken from that of my Friulian grandmother Irene who often made the recipe despite having a great intolerance to pepper.
How strange: the Roman grandmother never made this dish which I always had when with my only non-Roman grandmother!
Chicken with sweet peppers
- Preparation time: 60 minutes
- Ingredients for 4-6 servings
- Difficulty: Average difficulty recipe
- Ingredients
- 1 chicken cut into pieces
- 2 large peppers
- 6 ripe San Marzano tomatoes
- ½ glass of dry white wine
- Extra virgin olive oil to taste
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 bunch of marjoram
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Instructions
- Wash the tomatoes and cut them into cubes.
- Wash the peppers, remove the seeds, and cut them into large pieces.
- Prepare the chicken.
- In a large pan with a little oil and a clove of garlic, brown the chopped chicken on all sides.
- Add the cold white wine and let it evaporate. Add the tomatoes cut into large pieces.
- Cook over low heat for about thirty minutes.
- In another pan with a little oil, cook the peppers cut into large pieces, first with the lid and then uncovered for a few minutes.
- Add them to the chicken and continue cooking for another ten minutes.
- Sprinkle with marjoram and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Tips to ensure the success of the dish:
- To prepare the chicken, you have to burn on the flame all the possible lint that has been left by the butcher. Wash well and dry. Obviously, all the shelves that have been in contact with the raw chicken must be sanitized with amuchina or varecchina.
- Red peppers are sweeter because they have reached full maturity. Contrary to what one might think, green, yellow, and red peppers are not of a different type but only at different levels of maturation. I generally don’t think of one as red or yellow.
- I like that the peppers are crispy and for this reason I cook them separately in another pan and then add them to the chicken just at the end of cooking. If you like softer
