While my customary solution to the Jewish New Year is to move large or move house — suppose brisket or pot roast, along the standard chicken soup, potato kugel, a grain salad and a decadent dessert or two — this time I’m making plans on one thing other, one thing that’s inexpensive and chefs in a affordable period of time; with easy-to-find substances and now not a lot of them, both. Bonus issues if it might probably shipping me with one chunk.
Enter this unassuming braise of chicken with roasted peppers from Leah Koenig’s newest cookbook, “Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen.” As the identify suggests, the recipes hail from the Roman Jewish culinary canon, which is marked through scrappy, humble substances with daring flavors.
Get the recipe: Chicken With Peppers
At first look, the dish appears to be like too easy for a celebratory meal, however don’t let it idiot you — the ones substances come in combination in a flavorful and elegant braise.
You get started through roasting the peppers within the broiler till they’re charred everywhere. Then, as soon as the peppers are cool, you slip off their skins, scrape out the seeds, and slice the peppers into lengthy silky strands. (If you’re brief on time, Koenig says you’ll use jarred store-bought peppers, which gained’t be somewhat as lush, however will nonetheless ship just right effects.)
Then you progress directly to browning the chicken. You’ll most probably wish to do that in two batches, even supposing you could have a massive Dutch oven. (A splatter guard is your pal right here.) Once the chicken is golden, set it apart and saute half of of the roasted pepper strips, some garlic and the non-compulsory (however really helpful) pink pepper flakes.
A bit wine is going in to deglaze the pan and listen the entire tasty bits earlier than the canned tomatoes are added with a little salt and pepper. Next, you go back the chicken to the pot, gently nestling the items within the sauce, quilt the pot and braise the entirety for 45 mins. By then, the chicken might be mushy and the deeply hued slurry of tomatoes and half-melted peppers will flip shiny and fragrant.
A brief simmer with out a lid thickens the sauce simply a contact, and that’s it. With a bathe of unpolluted basil, the chicken and peppers make a placing dish that pairs superbly with crusty bread for sopping up that velvety sauce.
While Koenig suggests this braise for Shabbat, I feel it makes a really perfect Rosh Hashanah major route, particularly for the reason that get started of the Jewish New Year falls on a Friday night this time.
I do know I’m now not on my own in feeling that it’s tricky to devise for a holiday meal on the finish of the workweek. But this luscious dish feels particularly potential. In below two hours — even much less time when you skip roasting the peppers and move the jarred course — you could have a festive major route, that whilst nontraditional within the context of Rosh Hashanah, will style comforting and acquainted.
My mother likes to mention that the way you usher within the new yr is the way you’ll spend it, and she or he may well be onto one thing. So right here’s hoping that the minimalism and simplicity of this dish will set the tone for the yr to return, bringing with it nourishment and peace.
Get the recipe: Chicken With Peppers