Tour of Istria Day 2: Fresh Pasta Quills with Chicken Sauce (Fuzi con Sugo di Pollo)

 

Day Two of our Tour of Istra featured another nice recipe by Lidia Bastianich, pasta with a chicken sauce. The concept here is, like the Buzara di Scampi, quite simple. However, while the preparation is quick and easy, this does take quite a bit longer to cook.

The chicken sauce is a very simple combination of some sauteed onions with herbs and spices coupled with a dollop of tomato paste, a few cups of chicken broth, and shredded chicken. The "secret ingredient" here is cooking the chicken in the broth itself to get it ready to shred, which lets the tomato and chicken impart their flavors onto one another.

Sautéing the onions together with the rosemary and bay leaves. 

Substitutions for a Small Kitchen and a Budget

Lidia's recipe, which you can find in her book, calls for rehydrated porcini mushrooms to be added to the sauce. Additionally, it calls for Fuzi to be made for the pasta, which is freshly made pasta dough, pressed flat, and rolled up into a quill.

Having neither the budget for the dried porcini mushrooms (they were around $20/lb) or the time and space to make fresh pasta in our small kitchen on a weeknight, we made some substitutions. First, rather than using the rehydrated porcini, we diced up some oyster mushrooms. To the best of our knowledge, these are pretty close in texture and flavor to porcini. Additionally, instead of making fresh fuzi, we bought a package of campanelle, which we felt did a fairly good job of imitating the final form of the pasta Lidia calls for.

Making the Dish
What You'll Need
1/2 cup oyster mushrooms
2 legs chicken
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 branches rosemary
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 lb campanelle pasta
salt and pepper to taste

The first thing to do is get the sauce going so that you can simmer the chicken pieces in it. Sautéing the onions and rosemary together produced a very nice aroma that got Herbie quite excited.

Once they were nice and soft, we dropped in our chicken pieces. Another substituion here - Lidia calls for a whole chicken, but since it's just the two of us we used just a few peices. We opted for the leg and thigh pieces, as these are our go-to pieces when we're going to be shredding chicken. It's a lot more flavorful than the breast and shreds more easily. 

After we browned the chicken on the outside, we added the tomato paste and the chicken broth to the pan to cover the chicken, and then let it simmer. At this point, it's time to let that chicken cook for about an hour. Cooking the chicken at a low temperature like this in a broth, rather than over direct high heat, makes the meat much more tender, juicy, and flavorful - perfect for shredding. This works for not only chicken, but flank steak, ribs, brisket, pork, and pretty much any other tough cut of meat. If you've got the time for it, it's a great way to cook on a budget, as these cuts are generally less expensive, but can end up tasting supremely good when prepared in such a way.

After the chicken was done cooking, we took it out and shredded the meat off the bone. We knew it was perfectly cooked because the meat was literally falling off the bone - some of it fell off into the sauce as we were taking the pieces out! Shredding is a fun process. We use two forks, one to hold the piece down and the other to pull the meat off into strings. They also help for spearing any particularly succulent pieces to quickly sneak a bite.

Fall off the bone good.

If there is any chicken left that you haven't eaten at this point, pour it back into the sauce, and mix it all together. 

Add the pasta...

And stir it all together. Since the sauce will be a bit soupy, add a bit of grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese to the pot and mix it together. This will give the sauce a somewhat creamy texture.

Stirring in the final touch of some grated cheese. Probably wouldn't hurt to add parsley or basil at this point either. 

Now it's finally time to eat! 

The Wine

We chose an Italian red to go with this one, of the Nero D'Avola varietal. This is a really nice varietal and a good "go-to" if you're ever in need of an Italian red and all you can think of is Chianti. The one we picked up was the Tenuta Rapitala Campo Reale and we were really pleased with it.

It has a dark, fruity flavor, not dry at all but not too sweet. For $12, it was extremely drinkable and a wine we'll certainly get again.

The Result

The dish was really quite good. It has a sort of comforting characteristic to it, reminiscent of chicken noodle soup, which makes it a joy to eat. It would likely have felt even more this way with the use of fresh pasta rather than dried. We both thought the dish could have used some more tomato flavor, and decided that next time we make it we'll either increase the amount of tomato paste used, or even add crushed tomatoes. Regardless, the concept of shredded chicken in a tomato sauce is certainly a winner. If you've got some time and want a fulfilling, comforting, delicious dish, this is one to consider.