It’s been five days since we came back from Italy and yet we miss her already! To console each other and to share some of our trip with our loved ones, Pia and I tried to copy a recipe that we savored over there, and I must say that it is rather well done! ^^
And now I share our recipe, to make you travel too, hoping that you like it.

for 4 people, we will need:

• 800 g pieces of chicken (thigh)
• 1 large red pepper (or 2 medium)
• 600 g peeled and crushed tomatoes (fresh or canned)
• 2 onions
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 branch of thyme
• 1 branch of rosemary
• 100 g pancetta (or other Italian cold cuts)
• 1 small glass of white wine (optional)
• 1 pinch of sugars

Serve with:

• some fresh basil leaves
• a little grated Parmesan cheese
• 400 g pasta

Beforehand:

We will start by preparing the ingredients. First, if you have fresh tomatoes, plum them and remove it, if you do not have access to tomatoes, prefer their canned tomatoes. Let’s take a look at our cloves of garlic. Let’s also cut your peppers into strips.

For cooking:

we cook 1/3 of the pancetta in a casserole with a little olive oil. While cooking it will release a little fat, and become crispy. Then add the chicken pieces in this fat to brown them. If you have taken thighs, put them to the side of the skin to make it look good. Add our onions and garlic, then crushed tomatoes, peppers and finally sugar (which will break the acidity of tomatoes). Let’s come back for ten minutes with thyme and rosemary.

Preheat our oven to 180 degrees and bake for about 1 hour, taking care to put the chicken on top, skin up.

For the service:

Once the sauce has reduced enough, (all must be a little like a jam, a little thick) we return in a hot pan the rest of our Italian sausage to make it very crispy.

Buon appetito!