Adjusting, Part 1 (or how to turn Chicken Cacciatora for four into Chicken Cacciatora for two)

Recipes: Chicken Cacciatora, Buttered Whole-Wheat Pasta, Roasted Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar

I don't know if you're like I am, but I read cookbooks like novels. I also read a lot of cooking magazines because I love to cook and eat, and I've noticed you'll rarely see a recipe, especially in a magazine, that's written for two. If you do it's not likely to be very interesting; that's just my observation. No, it's obvious - you're going to need to know how to take that great-looking recipe on page 58 of the latest Bon Appetit that serves four-to-six, and make it into your own fabulous recipe for two.

The way to approach this differs somewhat from one kind of dish to another. For instance, a baked pasta dish like lasagna or tuna noodles generally feeds a lot of people, maybe six or even eight with a big salad. You would downsize (or more accurately, right-size) this kind of dish differently from the way you would right-size a chicken dish or a pork roast. This is because chicken pieces and the size of a pork roast are easily "quantifiable". Yikes, what does that mean? It only means that you can count them easily to determine how much is likely to be the right amount for two. It makes sense that you wouldn't count noodles, so right-sizing baked ziti will be different from right-sizing chicken dishes. The chicken is easier, and that's why we're going to start with Chicken Cacciatora, or as it's correctly called in Italian Pollo alla Cacciatora (Chicken in the style of the Hunter).

Just a riff on the name, it seems every hunter in Italy has his or her own style and this dish has as many variations as there are hunters' wives, probably. Many of the recipes use bell peppers and tomatoes, as this one does, but I've seen other recipes also called Pollo alla Cacciatora made with black olives and anchovies (no tomatoes or peppers) as well as other things like mushrooms. This is classic country cooking that uses whatever the Hunter brings home from the hunt and whatever the Wife has in the pantry, so don't worry at all if you see other recipes that don't look like this one. The good news is, once you're used to making it this way, you'll find ways to substitute what you have for what you don't have and it'll become your own great recipe for Chicken Cacciatore.

OK, here are the original ingredients for Pollo alla Cacciatora, straight from a little cookbook called The Best of Italy:

• 1 3-pound chicken, cut into serving pieces, rinsed*, and patted dry
• Salt & pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded, & cut into strips
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 2 cups drained, peeled & chopped tomatoes or 1 28-ounce can peeled tomatoes, drained & chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano or 1/2 teaspoon dried
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves

Serves 4 to 6.

Right away you know a whole chicken and all those tomatoes are going to make a big dish, way too much for two people. A whole chicken is usually cut up into eight pieces. Two people need half that, at the most. And since you're not going to use a whole chicken, why not just get your favorite pieces? In my case that's chicken thighs, but it could also be legs or breast too, depending on what you like. I'm going to go with thighs for the purpose of this discussion, and you know in your heart that if you love chicken breasts better you can use those. You just have to make a mental note to cook them about 10 minutes less than thighs.

Two people can generally eat four thighs, unless they are very large. If I had large thighs, I would use three in this dish. The third can be split between two people if you're still hungry after the first one. Or it will make a wonderful lunch for someone the next day. If the thighs are small, use four.

*Many older recipes, which this is, will tell you to rinse the chicken but that is no longer recommended. Frankly, it has been found that rinsing just spreads all the "stuff" around your sink. If you pat the pieces dry with paper towels and cook it thoroughly, your chicken will be fine, and so will your sink.

Now you have to look at the rest of the ingredients to determine how much to use with your four, or three, thighs. I'm sometimes a tiny bit annoyed at "1 onion, sliced" or whatever. There's a lot of difference between a small onion, a medium onion, and a huge onion. If I'm writing a recipe, I like to use "1 cup sliced onion" or "1 medium onion, sliced". So let's say you have a medium onion. Just slice it thinly and you'll have a nice amount. If you have a huge onion, slice half of it.

Red bell pepper is interchangeable in my mind with orange and yellow bell pepper. Not so with green bell peppers, which are really hard to digest. You want a significant presence of sweet vegetable in this dish, so I'd still go with one whole bell pepper, whether it's red, yellow, or orange. Slice it kind of thin so it gets really sweet when you cook it, and be sure to get the seeds out.

You can't have too much garlic. Well, I suppose you can but this amount in this dish will be great. Garlic is very strong when it's raw, but when it cooks as much as it does in this dish, it becomes sweet and mellow and give a wonderful depth to the sauce. Keep the garlic at two cloves, and use cloves that are at least medium-size.

Now we start to make some adjustments for using less meat and serving fewer eaters. Some of the white wine will cook away, but only half this amount is needed for the extra kick in flavor it gives. And the tomatoes can be cut in half. I wouldn't bother peeling and seeding and chopping tomatoes for this dish (unless I had gobs of fresh tomatoes I had grown myself that I needed to use). I'd use a 14-ounce can of good quality organic chopped tomatoes, and don't forget to drain the juice off before using or your sauce won't thicken!

The rest is seasoning. Don't be intimidated by "minced fresh this-and-that". If you have a kitchen garden with fresh herbs, by all means use them. They will be wonderful! If you don't, and most people probably don't, use dried. In this recipe, the only herb you can't replace with dried is basil. If you don't have fresh basil for this recipe, just omit it. Dried basil is a waste of money.

Note to you: If you've had your dried herbs since before dirt was invented, replace them before you cook. Dried herbs should be replaced every six months or so. Elderly herbs are not dangerous, they're just tasteless. Why bother putting them in?

So, that wasn't so hard, was it? We've adjusted our recipe for two and you can see it's just logic and common sense. Let's cook some dinner.

Chicken Cacciatora (for two)

• 4 small or 3 large chicken thighs, with bone and skin attached, patted dry
• Salt & pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced thin
• 1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, cored, seeded, & cut into thin strips
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 14-ounce can organic chopped tomatoes, juice drained
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano, or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme, or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 small bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves (optional)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a medium skillet and brown the chicken on both sides, turning occasionally. This will take about 8 minutes. Turn off the heat and transfer the chicken to a plate.

Heat the oil in skillet again and add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Cook, stirring now and then, for 5 minutes. Add the wine and cook over medium high heat for 1 minute, until you smell the alcohol cook off.

Add the tomatoes, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste, and bring the mixture to a simmer.

Return the chicken to the skillet, nestling it in the vegetables. Cover it and cook it at a bare simmer for 35 minutes, or until it is very tender. If there is too much liquid still in the skillet, take the cover off and let it cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. Be sure it doesn't cook dry. Turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes.

You're done. Serve over buttered noodles or other buttered pasta, placing a piece of chicken on top of the noodles and spooning the vegetables over it.

Buttered Whole-Wheat Pasta

You can use any pasta (or noodles) you like under the chicken. I used farfalle the other day and it was really good. Spaghetti is good, too, and egg noodles work especially well. I like the added flavor of whole wheat pasta under this dish - it's hearty and really good-tasting. Go with your own preference.

Bring a medium pot of water to boil. You always need a lot of water to cook pasta, because it needs room to move around while it cooks. When the water is almost boiling, put in at least a tablespoon of good sea salt, or even more. The water should be salty, otherwise the pasta will taste bland. Bleh!

Put about 1/3 pound of a long pasta, or about a cup of a dried shaped pasta, into the salty boiling water and either stir it or, if you're using a long pasta like spaghetti, pull it up and separate it with tongs. Do this periodically while it cooks. Keep the pasta water on high heat throughout. Most pasta is done at about 9 minutes, but some pasta (like angel-hair) takes much less time. Test your pasta. Pull a strand or a piece out and taste it. It should have just the slightest bite to it (al dente, or to the tooth). When it's there, turn the heat off and drain it in a colander or through a strainer. Put the pasta back in the empty pot and add a tablespoon or so of butter, and stir it around. You're done. The chicken you've already cooked goes over the pasta.

This dish is really all you need for a delicious satisfying dinner. It has protein (chicken), vegetables (tomatoes, bell pepper, onion), and starch (pasta), and lots of color and taste. Of course, if you want to. . .

!!!Step it up!!!

. . . you could make some roasted asparagus with balsamic vinegar to go with it. Yum! And it's easy - here's how:

Roasted Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Take about 1/2 pound asparagus spears and line them up. Cut the bottom two inches off the stalks. Then put them in a colander and wash them with cool water.

If they are fat spears, take a vegetable peeler and peel the skin off the bottom half of each stalk. If they are thin spears, don't bother. Pat the stalks dry with paper towels and put them in a roasting dish.

Pour one tablespoon good quality extra virgin olive oil over the stalks. Sprinkle them with a good dose of  sea salt. With your hands, turn them over and over to distribute the oil and salt evenly. Put the roasting dish full of asparagus into the oven for 20 minutes. When 10 minutes have passed, use tongs to turn the asparagus spears over.

Take the baking dish out and sprinkle the asparagus with one tablespoon balsamic vinegar. With a vegetable peeler, make peels from a piece of parmigiano cheese and distribute them over the spears.
Serve and savor!