Published May 1, 2007.
This Italian-American skillet dish makes a great weeknight meal—once you solve the problems of greasy sauce and flabby skin.
We tried several published versions of this popular New York City restaurant recipe, but our results were too greasy, too spicy, or too tart.
We wanted to bring the bright, flavorful ingredients that characterize this dish together in a home-style, weeknight Italian meal.
We first needed to bring the ingredients in balance. Since the overall dish is so spicy, we replaced hot Italian sausage with sweet. To streamline preparation, we opted for split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts that could easily be cut into halves or thirds to speed up cooking time. We also needed to temper the heat of our hot cherry peppers, so we cut back on the number and removed the seeds. Our final technique was a series of logical steps. First, we sautéed the sausage and chicken, reserving a little of the fat. After removing the meat from the pan, we sautéed the vegetables in a light film of the reserved fat and composed our sauce. We nestled the chicken and sausages in the vegetables to finish cooking in the oven, which kept the chicken skin crisp. Once the chicken and sausages were on the serving platter, all the sauce required was a little thickening and brightening with vinegar and parsley.
list of recipes
