A few years back, we held a Valentine’s party where we invited guests to bring red food. Our contribution was the main dish, a set of roasted organic chickens on a cacciatore bed of red, gold and green peppers, green olives, onions, whole cloves of garlic, and carrots in a heavy marinara sauce. Mary stuffed an organic lemon and sprig of fresh rosemary from the garden into each bird. She coated them with salt, pepper and olive oil. The chicken fat and olive oil infused the marinara, sweet from carrots and onions, resulting in a spectacularly savory cacciatore. We served the carved bird and vegetables on a bed of steaming basmati rice and garnished with curls of parmesan.
This Thanksgiving we took a detour around the obligatory turkey, buying instead a large organic chicken. Mary had recently discovered a way to make her traditional marinara even better. Here’s it went:
Starting with a large can of fire-roasted tomatoes, she prepared the cacciatore described above, adding chunks of Portobello mushrooms. She grew up in an Italian household and likes her veggies in large chunks. Of garlic, she says "leave it as whole cloves, it’s sweeter.” As a final touch, she laid strips of bacon on top of the bird.
While it was braising in the oven, we donned our heavy cloaks and liripipes that Mary sewed for us and strolled around town bellowing “Happy Thanksgiving!” to terrified hipsters glued to cellphones in the park. We popped into a Longmont distillery and then a cidery, asking for Glögg and discovering local options for warm spiced drinks, including mulled hard ciders and hot toddies with Longmont-made spirits. We arrived home with appetites.
The kitchen smelled ferociously of cacciatore. As we dug in, we could taste how the smoky flavor of Jesse’s good farmer bacon had amplified the fire-roasted tomato effect. It seemed fitting for “Huntsman’s Chicken”, as I render the Italian into English. I like how the “cacc” in cacciatore matches the English “catch.” Our own in-house hunter – The Cat – was never a fan of red sauce. Still, she gobbled down her portion of the vegetable-spattered catch without complaint.
