cooking.nytimes.com

Braised Ligurian Chicken

5.0(875)

This dish came to The Times in a 2003 article about Jamie Oliver: "What I found quite interesting with this dish, being English," Mr. Oliver said, "is that when you eat this, it's quite delicately flavored. It's perfumed with the wine and the rosemary. You get this kind of meaty kind of saltiness from the olives, and what's really interesting is if an English housewife got hold of the recipe, she'd probably stone the olives and have quite a lot of them. But in Italy, literally for eight people they put that much and they leave the pits in." In his hand, he cradled about two dozen olives. Mr. Oliver continued: "When you cook olives whole like this, it's almost like an anchovy. The salt comes out of the olives, and the olive becomes more like a vegetable. And the salt from the olive flavors the chicken really wonderfully." This is an adaptation of his recipe.

by Amanda Hesser

Open original recipe

ItalianPoultry, Main Course

Servings

4 servings

Total time

40 min

Calories / serving

924 kcal

Ingredients (10)

serves

2 heaping tablespoons flourflour
Sea salt and freshly ground black peppersalt-and-pepper
1 4-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieceschicken
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oilextra-virgin-olive-oil
4 to 5 fresh rosemary sprigsrosemary
6 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly slicedgarlic
1 1/2 cups white winewhite-wine
4 anchovy fillets (optional)
1/2 cup calamata olives (with pits)
3 ripe plum tomatoes, halved, seeded and coarsely choppedtomato

Instructions (3 steps)

01In a large bowl, combine flour with salt and pepper to taste. Add chicken pieces and toss until evenly coated.
02Place a large flameproof casserole dish over medium-high heat, and heat olive oil. Add chicken pieces, and fry until golden underneath, about 5 minutes (Fry in batches if your pan isn't large enough to accommodate all of the chicken without crowding). Turn chicken, and add rosemary and garlic. Continue to fry until garlic is softened but not colored, about 3 minutes. Add wine. When it comes to a boil, add anchovies, olives and tomatoes.