Basque Chicken – Easy Variant

I haven’t posted a recipe since September but I haven’t been cooking either.  Since this blog is about what I actually do,  there hasn’t been anything of that nature to write about.  To get back into the swing of things I’m repeating one of my favorite easy recipes (that I’ve written about a couple of times before [1] [2]. Although the recipe’s been in here twice before I’ll give you this variant, slightly different, as I actually made it this time (it’s never the same twice).

This time it looks like this:

 

It’s pretty simple.  Made from, more or less, the following ingredients

 

 

Thus, the ingredients that require any work on our part are:  some chicken, a green pepper, an onion and 4 cloves of garlic.  Other ingredients are required but those others don’t need to be prepared.

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Basque Chicken

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 1 kg chicken (whole, cut up or pieces) [1#]
• 1 green pepper, julienne
• 1 onion, julienne
• 4 cloves garlic, brunoise [diced fine]
• 3 tomatoes (oops, I forgot that they had to be prepared – peeled and deseeded and diced would be good [or use a jar of strained tomatoes)
• 2 C dry white wine
• 1 red chili pepper
• oil
• salt
• pepper

Procedure

1. Salt and pepper the chicken
2. Oil into a hot pot and brown the chicken. for color
3. Remove chicken, add onions, soften
4. Add garlic and peppers, soften
5. Add tomatoes, stir
6. Add chicken
7. Wine to cover, add chili pepper, bring to a boil
8. Lower the heat, cover, simmer for 20 minutes
9. Remove chicken and vegetables, leaving the “sauce”.  Hold the chicken/vegs warm (cover with foil maybe)
10. Remove the chili pepper and toss away
11. Reduce the sauce to a saucy consistency (coats the back of a spoon)
    • The dish can be held at this point for a good little while
12. Return chicken/vegs to sauce, crank the heat to quickly warm it up
13. Serve

Notes

1. I buy a whole chicken and cut it up; using the carcass to make stock
2. Start with a pot that’s big enough to hold all the ingredients; one that you can cover
3. Sometimes I do the chicken first, sometimes the veggies
4. This is the only point where the chicken picks up color so brown them well
5. “Real” Basque Chicken also Serrano ham in the recipe.  I left it out this time.

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