May 5 – May 11, 2025

Tuesday:                               Spaghetti at Tim and Hilda’s

Wednesday:                        Burgers at the Wanamaker Bar, PFC

Alas, no pictures of this dinner, but here’s a chicken and a lemon:

Thursday:                             Il Pollo di Maria Bertuzzi with Polenta

Friday :                                Sausage Risotto with Herbed Bread Crumbs

 

Saturday:                              Chicago Tavern-Style Pizza

Sunday:                                 Grilled Lamb Chops, Lemon Potatoes, Green

                                                Beans with Tomatoes, Shallots and Feta

The Lush Food and Rich Voice of Lynne Rossetto Kasper

If you pay as much attention to cooking as we do, you probably have listened to “The Splendid Table” radio program back in the day before Lynne Rossetto Kasper left (after 20 years as the host) and it got taken over by the woke.  It’s still worth listening to and I think they’ve stopped worrying about misgendering people.

Not only was it a great program, but Lynne’s voice was as rich as the food she discussed.  She also happens to be one of those rare people who look like what you imagine when you hear their voice.  Off the top of my head, Robert DeNiro, Marilyn Monroe and Daffy Duck also look like they sound.

Kasper has written a number of cookbooks and I am happy to have one of them – The Splendid Table Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food – a ridiculously long title for a ridiculously good cook book.  Emilia Romagna is the home of Mortadella, the ethereal cured meat that is called baloney from its origin in the city of Bologna.  But American baloney is to Mortadella as a second grader’s Play-Doh snakes are to Michelangelo’s David.  [Bologna, by the way, is a beautiful city with red-tiled buildings and covered walkways and thirty or so leaning towers.  I remember waking up on our first morning in Bologna, after a night of too much wine and seeing all these leaning, about-to-fall towers and deciding that breakfast would not be a good idea that morning.]  You can’t have a bad meal in Bologna, unless you go to one of several Irish bars (who knew?) in the university neighborhood – Bologna is home to the oldest law school in Europe – or a tourist trap.  Our favorite meal was at a small restaurant about 30 minutes out of town where we were the only patrons and our meal was cooked and served by single family.  It was a simple Tortellini in Brodo, accompanied by good bread and a pitcher of local wine.  The dinner was also inexpensive, which downtown Bologna is not.

Lynne’s cookbook is worth exploring in detail.  She prefaces the recipes with personal stories or food history and includes suggestions for side dishes and wine.  In this post we’ll give you a taste with a simple-to-cook weeknight dinner – Il Pollo in Tegame di Maria Bertuzzi – which translates to ‘Maria Bertuzzi’s Chicken in a Pan,’ although Kasper’s cookbook calls it Maria Bertuzzi’s Lemon Chicken, for the sake of dignity, I suppose.  It takes a little less to a little more than an hour to cook.  If you don’t serve with a side dish, you’ll have only one pan to clean, and it may just cause you to book that trip to Italy you’ve been thinking about.

Il Pollo in Tegame di Maria Bertuzzi

(adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper)

Timing:                                              About one hour

Note:  If you don’t have a large skillet – 12” – or a shallow Dutch oven, or if you have a chicken over 4 lbs.  add 15 minutes.  You’ll need to brown the chicken in batches.

Ingredients:                                       Serves 4

3 ½ – pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces (2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 breasts – you can cut these in half if they’re large, 2 wings with drumettes)

Zest of one large lemon

5-6 tablespoons of lemon juice (2 large lemons)

1 large garlic clove, minced – we used one small clove

½ small carrot, minced

½ medium onion, minced

3 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

 Fresh sage leaves – you can substitute dried sage leaves

¾ cup chopped ripe fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded.  [Use Roma tomatoes, score an “x” in the stem end, place in boiling water for about 1 minute and, using a paring knife, peel off the skin} – we used about a full cup

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and ground black pepper

Pinch of ground cloves

To serve:  2 more tablespoons of minced Italian parsley

Prep:

Cut up the chicken (great videos on the web, if you don’t know how)

Mince the carrot, onion, parsley

Scald and peel the tomatoes, then seed and chop

Mince the garlic

Gather the other ingredients

Cook:

Heat the oil in a large, 12-inch skillet or shallow Dutch oven, over medium-high or a bit lower temperature.  Place the chicken pieces in the pan, skin-side down.  Reduce the heat to medium and brown the chicken slowly (you may need to adjust the temperature) to a rich amber, sprinkling the pieces with a little salt and pepper as they cook, turning them to brown all over.  This will take 15-20 minutes.

Remove the chicken to a platter.

Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat, set the pan over medium and sauté the carrot, onion, parsley and sage – about 8 minutes or until the onion just begins to color.  Stir in the lemon zest and keep cooking while stirring for another 3 minutes or until the onion is deep gold.  Try not to burn the brown glaze on the bottom of the pan.

Now blend in the garlic, cloves, tomatoes and water, scraping up the glaze.  Add the chicken, skin-side up, and 2 tablespoons of the lemon juice and bring to a gentle bubble.  Cover the pan and cook for 15 minutes, then uncover and cook for another 10 minutes – the sauce should thicken and cling to the chicken.

Meanwhile, warm a serving plater in a low oven.

Serve:

Sprinkle the remaining 3 or 4 tablespoons of lemon juice over the chicken, adjust salt and pepper and pile the chicken on the platter, moisten with the pan juices and scatter the remaining 2 tablespoons of minced parsley over the dish.

Lynne recommends serving with polenta and serving with an acidic, minerally Italian red.