Exactly one year ago, Tom and I were booked on a flight to Rome, for a week’s stay. We so miss that city! Even if Italy reopens to Americans this summer, we won’t be joining the first wave of post-pandemic visitors. While waiting, we try our best to reproduce the Roman foods that we love, here in our own kitchen.
Pollo alla romana, chicken braised with sweet red peppers, is a homely, comforting dish served in every trattoria in Rome. It was one of the earliest recipes we recreated for our first cookbook, La Tavola Italiana, and is still one of my favorites.
Trouble is, not even the best variety of red Bell peppers grown in the USA can compare with the huge, gorgeous ones available in Rome’s vegetable markets. Still, even domestic peppers can make this a very good dish. And this week, long before there are any local peppers, I found big, good-looking ones from Mexico (we’ve been grateful for Mexican fruits and vegetables all winter) at my best local vegetable stand. Each weighed about 9 ounces and cost all of 50 cents.
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We can’t get chickens as flavorful as those in Italy either (I think Roman birds must lead more interesting lives than American ones), but I try for the best I can.
Scaling down my own recipe, I began browning two cut up chicken legs in olive oil, along with a sliced garlic clove. This didn’t go well. Whatever I had last cooked in that pan had totally unseasoned it, and the chicken pieces persisted in sticking, tearing the skin and pasting it to the bottom of the pan.
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Chicken stickin’
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The pieces also thought it was fun to spatter their olive oil all over the stove every time I struggled to dislodge them, as you can see in the picture. Oy.
When they had gotten as brown as they were going to (not very), I deglazed the pan with white wine and scraped up all the remnants of the tasty skin, leaving them in to contribute whatever they could to the dish. The wine also persuaded the chicken pieces to release their death grip on the pan, so I could comfortably stir in about a cup’s worth of puree made from canned Italian-style tomatoes, plus salt and pepper.
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The chicken simmered along quietly in the liquid for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I had been peeling and quartering two of my favorite German butterball potatoes and also cutting up one of the big red peppers. I added them to the pan.
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I should admit that potatoes are totally non-canonical in pollo alla romana, but for an occasional variation on the recipe, they’re awfully good. Potatoes love tomatoes, and vice versa.
Covered, the pan simmered along for half an hour, getting an occasional stir that wafted up an increasingly mouth-watering aroma. I don’t know how it happens, but I’d swear there’s some sort of chemical interaction among chicken, peppers, and tomatoes that makes for an unexpectedly rich and luscious dish. My partially mangled chicken pieces even came out looking not too bad.
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And tasting fine too. So, while pollo alla romana in the USA is not as great as it is in Rome, it is a consolation, until we can get back across the ocean for the real thing. Moreover, this is a chicken dish that even Tom likes!
One of Michele’s favorite dishes when we are in Rome-making me hungry for Rome
You had some feisty fowl. I knew you would overcome their resistance
Thanks for your faith in me!
Gigi Ballista from the north of Italy interviewd Sora (i.e. Mrs) Lella from Rome, she and her family had a restaurant on the Tiberine Island (descendants still there). This video is a hoot to watch if one understands Italian … less so, if one doesn’t but am forwarding link in any case because you just might want to watch it. If you go to about 6 minutes into the interview, Mr B keeps blalhtering on about Napoleon’s chef and creation of Chicken Marengo – and Sora Lella will have none of it. It is pollo alla Romana or nothing ! And she reckoned that if Napoleon had ever come to Rome he would have it eaten pollo alla romana the way she makes it. Watch her chop the chicken, my she is scary the way she wields it!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw477zl0iBY
That is priceless, Jo! Lella was a true donna in gamba — even more of a dynamo than Anna Dente. I could follow most of the dialogue, but it moved so fast I couldn’t quite get whether she was using onion in her pollo alla romana or forbidding it. Sora Lella is one of our favorite restaurants in Rome, and I’m sure I’ve eaten the dish there more than once. Many thanks for sharing the video.
she became a good actress too later on in life and of course she was the sister of the great Aldo Fabrizi (the priest in Rome Open City, amongst other stellar roles)
Aw Diane, I am so glad you enjoyed this! Sadly, I’ve never eaten there … so … why not? … perhaps next time you are in Rome we could go together? it’s a beautiful part of the city if nothing else … 🙂
Why not, indeed! Though heaven only knows how far into the future that might be. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the pollo alla romana I had at Sora Lella in 2016.
Her recitation on what to look for in bell peppers reminded me of the advice given to me by an old Jamaican woman on what to look for in Scotch Bonnet chillies and how to use them. Sora’s knife skills are truly rudimentary.