Chicken Basquaise - FFWD

This recipe for our French Fridays with Dorie group was really easy to make and quite familiar.

This is what is known here as Portuguese Chicken, a casserole dish with peppers, tomatoes and a coarse paprika called pimentón. It´s one of our traditional type of sauces, not only for chicken but also red meat or pasta. I can see now why the name, since it comes from the Basque region. We have a very strong Spanish heritage, so it´s no surprise I´ve seen this combination of flavors since I was a kid.

I was never particularly interested in it though, since I´m not particularly interested in peppers. Though I like them I don´t choose them often. But this turned out very good. The white wine in combination with the chili, both fresh and in powder form, I think is what rounds up this recipe.

It´s a very straight forward casserole. A bit of olive oil is heated and onions, green and red peppers are softened, not browned. Then fresh chopped tomatoes, minced chilis, minced garlic, bay, thyme, salt, pepper are added and gently cooked until everything melds together a bit.

I browned the chicken in olive oil, added the wine and then the red pepper mixture. The recipe specifies that it will have liquid, but it didn´t happen to me. So I added a bit of water, just enough to allow the chicken legs to fully bake before the vegetables browned too much. Well, a wonderful sauce formed in the end, salty and spicy from the chili. Just wonderful.

I didn´t even bother making white rice as suggested to serve it with. I just enjoyed it straight up. And I left the bay leaf in the serving dish, since our tradition says that whoever get the bay leaf has to do the dishes.

 

There´s a version of this that uses eggs instead of chicken. Like scrambled eggs with peppers and tomatoes. A good idea for a healthy and robust breakfast.

The recipe is found in the book Around My French Table, by Dorie Greenspan.