Disclosure: I received a free sample of Rioja Tempranillo wine for a review. All opinions and recipe are mine alone.
It’s Tempranillo Day!
What does that mean to you? It means that today we are celebrating International Tempranillo Day with Rioja Wine. Why ‘Tempranillo?’ Because in Spanish ‘temprano’means ‘early,’ and these red grapes ripen and are harvested earlier than other red grape varieties. Look how much you’ve learned already.
I like a really good red wine, but I can never drink them because I tend to react to the tannins. With the lovely Spanish red table wines made from the Tempranillo grapes, not so much. So color me happy. And cheers!
This particular Rioja wine also happens to make the BEST marinade for Chicken Cacciatore. It’s robust and fruity, which makes it ideal for a marinade.
CHICKEN CACCIATORE WITH TEMPRANILLO WINE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
- 3 lbs. chicken pieces
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt & 1/2 tsp. pepper
- 5 bay leaves
- 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 5 cloves of peeled garlic (3 crushed and 2 sliced)
- 1 cup Red Tempranillo Wine
- flour (for dredging)
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup pitted manzanilla olives and pimientos
- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Put them in a large bowl.
2) Add bay leaves, rosemary, 3 crushed cloves of garlic, and red wine. Marinade overnight or at least for one hour.
3) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
4) Heat olive oil on the stove in a cast iron skillet or dutch oven.
5) Pour flour onto a plate. Remove chicken pieces from marinade, dredge them in flour and brown evenly in hot olive oil. Reserve the marinade.
6) Brown chicken only. It doesn’t have to be cooked through yet at this point. Remove to a separate plate.
7) Add half of the sliced garlic to pan along with half the olives. Stir and cook for about 1 minute.
8) Put chicken back into pan, pour remaining marinade, crushed tomatoes, the rest of the garlic and olives into the pan.
9) Bring to a slight boil, then place pan in the oven at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
10) Serve with crusty bread and rice or pasta.
So I served it with fat, buttery fettucine noodles, but I made them wait so I could take a photo of the finished dish. Because even though the wine was ready ‘temprano,’ we’re sometimes still on Cuban time around here.
But that’s not important right now.
Salud!
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