Simple Italian

As much as I love eating and cooking Asian food (Thai, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese...almost all of it), sometimes you just want something simple. Something with complex flavors, yes, but those that are created from cooking for a long time rather than with a lot of ingredients. One of the challenges of cooking Indian food is that you usually have this loooooong list of spices to grind or chop and carefully meter out into the recipe you are watching/stirring/pondering. But Italian is often different. Like this evening. It was a cool and rainy day. Very busy at work, but at the same time quiet (for me) because my colleagues are in London. I wasn't much in the mood for lunch so I went out and grabbed a bowl of vietnamese pho. (Such a disappointment in Munich!!!! Argh!!!) So I was HUNGRY for dinner, and the cool air and impending fall made me nostalgic for comforting Italian. I knew I had a half a chicken in the fridge...and tomatoes...garlic..onions...white wine...really all you need as long as you also have an hour or two of patience to wait for all those flavors to caramelize and decant and come together into something totally different.

So, even though I was HUNGRY, i was just sort of relaxed after the long day. I poured myself a glass of wine, and quickly chopped up the 4 key ingredients. Slowly sauteed the onions, the garlic, the chicken, the tomatoes, adding in the wine, the salt and pepper. Tasting along the way. You can't go wrong when you have a Marcella Hazan cookbook to guide you through. Or even just instinct...

I would have loved a handful of noodles with my Chicken Caccitore, but instead, I ended up more or less licking the juices from the dish off my fingers and vowing to make some noodles for the leftovers for tomorrow.