La Vera Cucina
Pollo Di Stefano
At Nonno’s Italian Restaurant in Altamonte Springs, Florida, locals enjoy a variety of Sicilian seafood specialties lovingly prepared by the LaCommare Family. Across multiple generations, a customer favorite has long been Pollo di Stefano.
The dish was developed by owner Leonardo LaCommare’s father Stefano, who came over from Sicily as a young man. Whenever Leonardo prepares it, the aroma of freshly sauteing garlic, chicken, and fragrant sherry fondly reminds Leonardo of learning to cook by his father Stefano’s side!
Ingredients:
- Flour for coating chicken
- Salt & pepper to taste
- 5 ounces raw chicken tenders
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon fresh ground garlic
- 2 tablespoons sherry wine
- 5 ounces Italian link sausage, cooked and sliced
- 6 Kalamata olives, pitted & halved
- 2 cups button mushrooms, sliced
- 2 Pepperoncini
- 1 Lemon half
- ¼ cup chicken broth
- Salt to taste
- Fresh Italian parsley to taste
Instructions:
Salt, pepper, and lightly flour chicken on all sides. Melt butter over medium flame. Add chicken to sear on all sides. Add garlic and stir through. When garlic is translucent (2-3 minutes), add sherry to deglaze pan.
Reduce heat to low, add sausage, olives, button mushrooms, and pepperoncini. Add chicken broth; squeeze lemon over mixture. Simmer over low heat 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms reduce and sauce thickens in pan. Add salt and parsley to taste.
Remove from heat, plate, and serve immediately. Best enjoyed after a hearty “primo” of pasta!
About La Farina
Today, many Italian doughs and pastas feature finely milled “00” farina (flour). But the cucina rustica of Italy’s contadini was based on homegrown flour. As a boy, restaurateur Paul Cataldo fondly remembers helping his Calabrian grandparents harvest their wheat.
Before switching to a mechanical thresher in the 1980s, Paul’s grandfather laid out rows of dry, harvested wheat sheaves on packed soil. A team of cows was led over the sheaves to break the seeds from the stalks.
Then an olive wood pitchfork tossed the stalks into the air to winnow seeds from chaff. The empty stalks were stacked for hay and the seeds were scooped up and carted to the local mill for grinding into their next year’s flour!