Skin-On Chicken Breast is similar to and simpler than doing the duck breasts from my last post. Have your butcher remove the bone from the breast leaving the skin in place or you can do that yourself.
Put them on a cutting board and cover with Saran. Pound them to an even thickness – about ¾ inch.
Blot them dry and season with salt and pepper and refrigerate uncovered for at least 1 hour. Bring them to room temperature before cooking.
Add a little oil to a cold pan. Put the breasts in skin side down and turn the heat on to medium. Weigh down the breasts so the skin makes full contact and browns evenly – it should take about 6 – 8 minutes.
My mother’s mother, Nicolina, came from Salerno. The Salernitano pronunciation is chee-fi-choff. My mother’s Uncle Tony lived on Staten Island and had a chicken coop near the back of his property. Every time we visited he offered to kill a chicken for my mother to take home. She always politely refused, preferring the neatly packaged ones from the supermarket.
This is a simple recipe that tastes more complicated than it is to prepare. There are other recipes for ’Ncip ’Nciape with more ingredients and more complicated. But this is the simplest and for me, the best.
Preparation:
Cut a room temperature chicken into 10 pieces, (2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 legs and 2 breasts each cut in half) and season with salt and pepper. Lightly brown in oil and remove (don’t pour out the fat). Lightly brown 5 cloves of garlic cut in half in the remaining chicken fat and oil in the same pot. Add ½ cup of liquid and deglaze the pot. Return chicken with 1/4 cup chopped parsley, cover and simmer on medium low heat covered for 20 minutes turning once. This is very good with a vinegary salad and I also love it left-over and room temperature or even cold. This recipe also works well with rabbit or lamb.
My great aunt Caroline could cook weeds and make them taste good. She had a dish her guests would often hope for at lunch. She’d sauté chicken hearts and mushrooms in olive oil with crumpled dried pepperoncini – simple ingredients which came together as something very special. The mushrooms were gathered by my Uncle Tony in his forays into the wilds of Staten Island to places only he knew.
When he went to pick wild mushrooms he’d be gone all day and Aunt Caroline would say, “He thinks I don’t know, but after he gets the mushrooms, he plays poker with his friends. As long as he brings me the mushrooms, I don’t say anything.”
The first time I can remember her serving the chicken hearts, she looked at me and without asking if I’d prefer it, cut a couple of slices of crunchy Italian bread and spread it with cream cheese and Welch’s grape jelly.
“Robbie’s ‘Merican,” she said to my mother, “so I made him a sandwich I saw on television.” I was glad to get the cream cheese and jelly but eventually acquired a taste for her chicken hearts.
Ingredients:
1 lb chicken hearts
1 lb sliced mushrooms (your choice)
¼ cup olive oil
Dried peperoncini to taste
Salt and black pepper to taste
Preparation:
Wash, dry and season the chicken hearts with salt and black pepper. Sear them in oil in a very hot pan and remove. Sauté sliced mushrooms in the remaining fat & oil. When done return the chicken hearts. Break up 3 or 4 dried peperoncini into the pan stir and serve when the peppers soften.
