 |
Prep Time: 0 Minutes Cook Time: 0 Minutes |
Ready In: 0 Minutes Servings: 2 |
|
Any food historian will tell you that trying to track down the origin of a recipe is like chasing tadpoles. There are so many, and they all look alike. Even when you find what seems to be the original source, you can't necessarily believe it because adapting recipes is an ageold industry. Nonetheless, I thought I'd give the hunt a try with chicken Canzanese, an unusual recipe that ran in the Times in 1969. A Google search for chicken Canzanese yielded many results, a number of them facsimiles, or slight variations of the chicken dish that appeared in the Times. Batali's and Callen's, which vary only slightly from the Times's recipe, are nearly word for word the same. Only one recipe that I found sourced the Times's recipe, which itself came from Ed Giobbi, a cookbook author, and was written about by Craig Claiborne. You can also find plenty of turkey recipes done in the style of Canzanese (Canzano is in the Abruzzo region in Italy), which refers to braised turkey, served cold with chopped turkey aspic. But chicken Canzanese, which is not mentioned in important Italian cookbooks like Le Ricette Regionali Italiane (Italian Regional Cooking), is completely different. When you make it, you understand why it's still kicking around after all these decades. After flash-brining the chicken, you throw everything into the pan at the same timechicken, cubed prosciutto, sage, bay leaves, rosemary, garlic, chile, cloves, peppercorns, and wineand end up with a dish that has the fragrance of Chinese steamed duck and the succulence of a Bolognese sauce. I sensed that it would be impossible to come to a conclusion about where chicken Canzanese originated (Giobbi's recipe was the earliest I could find), and this was confirmed as soon as I started calling people. Callen said she grew up in Abruzzo eating chicken Canzanese. Giobbi, whose recipe came from a family friend in Abruzzo, suggested that perhaps Callen was influenced by him. When I asked Callen if there was any chance she referred to Giobbi's recipe when writing about her family's dish, she said, Could be, very well. I didn't intend this to be an investigationrecipes are adapted all the time, it's one of the primary ways cuisines evolveso I did not chase down the dozens of sites that appear to have copied Callen or Batali. One thing is clear, though: a good recipe has a thousand fathers, but a bad one is an orphan. Ingredients:
kosher or coarse sea salt |
one 3-pound chicken, cut into serving pieces |
2 sage leaves |
2 bay leaves |
1 clove garlic, sliced lengthwise |
6 whole cloves |
2 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary |
12 black peppercorns, crushed |
1 dried hot red chile, broken and seeded |
one 1/8-inch-thick slice prosciutto (about 4 ounces) |
1/2 cup dry white wine |
1/4 cup water |
Directions:
1. 1. Add 3 tablespoons kosher salt or coarse sea salt to a large bowl. Dissolve in about 1/2 cup warm water. Lay the chicken pieces in the bowl and cover with cold water (about 4 cups). Let stand for about 1 hour. Drain and pat dry.
2. 2. Arrange the chicken pieces in one layer in a skillet and add the sage, bay leaves, garlic, cloves, rosemary, peppercorns, and red pepper. Cut the prosciutto into small cubes and sprinkle it over the chicken. Add the wine and water. Do not add salt, since the prosciutto will season the dish. Cover and simmer until the chicken is just cooked through, 30 to 35 minutes.
3. 3. Remove the chicken to a plate and reduce the cooking juices until concentrated and a little syrupytaste it to see. Serve the chicken in shallow bowls with the juices (and slivered garlic and prosciutto) spooned on top. Mop up juices with country bread.
4. Cooking notes: A great chicken dish deserves (and depends on) a great chickenbuy the highest-quality bird you can find. The best place to look is a farmers' market.
5. The chicken never browns, so if presentation is your thing, avert your eyesor simply pull the meat from the bones and make a warm salad with escarole, the broth, and prosciutto. Or use the meat and sauce to make a very simple pasta dish. Whatever you do, be careful not to overcook the chicken. And serve it right after cooking, when its aromatics are most intense.
6. The original recipe said it serves 4, but when I made the dish for my mother and me, we polished off the whole thing. Only count on it serving 4 if youre making a bunch of side dishes.
7. It may seem strange to buy expensive prosciutto and cut it into cubes, but dont skimp on the quality of prosciutto. I did once and was punished with a salty sauce. If you can only get indifferent prosciutto, add less of it.
8. Readers: I remember that I used the recipe the first time because chicken was affordable for a crowd and the ingredients then seemed different but not weird. This recipe as I read and reread it over the years pushed me to learn more about cooking. Why not brown the chicken pieces? (Giobbi does not.) What about putting it all together and sticking it in the oven? What if I chopped the seasonings and put them in the cavity and under the skin of a roasting chicken and then, well, roasted it? The recipe with its time-proven flavors (back to the Renaissance at least?) has never failed.
9. For me, this is one of those recipes that permutes endlessly as the seasons, the occasion, or the cook's mood changes. Sometimes (often) I do brown the chicken, sometimes use pancetta instead of prosciutto, sometimes add a little chopped tomato, sometimes introduce porcini mushrooms. If the company at dinner have dietary restrictions, oil-cured black olives can stand in for the pork. I have tried it with boneless chicken breasts onlysatisfactoryand with guinea henexcellent.
10. From Jonatha Ceely, e-mail MAY 18, 1969: CHICKEN BIG, BY CRAIG CLAIBORNE. RECIPE BY ED GIOBBI, WHO ADAPTED IT FROM A FAMILY FRIEND IN ITALY. 1969
11. Reprinted from THE ESSENTIAL NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK by Amanda Hesser. Compilation copyright (c) 2010 by The New York Times Company and Amanda Hesser. Recipes and reprinted text copyright (c) 2010 by The New York Times Company. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
|
|