Chicken Cacciatore

Since the birth of 2nd child and daughter I’ve been looking for recipies to cook enmasse so I can freeze them up and eat during the week. Something that popped up was Chicken Cacciatore. I’m not going to go into a blow by blow of how to cook it (there’s a fair few of those already) but wanted to share an interesting tidbit.

Cacciatore means “hunter” in Italian. This is a throw back to the fact that this meal is a hunter’s meal in that they grabbed whatever meat they had (chicken/fowl for instance), threw in any handy vegatables or herbs and cooked it up. Slow cooked if it was a gamey meat and with some wine given they are Italian, my sort of meal.

What’s also interesting is that the type of wine used depends on the region of Italy. White in the north and red in the south.

For this dish I’ve used a “liberal” dash of red wine, home grown fresh rosemary, home grown fresh bay leaves (yeah I know, a little French) and some dried oregano. Vegetables include carrots, celery, onion and garlic. All served up with some rice….did the Italian’s use rice? How else have you cooked up this Italian stew?