My wife makes a great Italian chicken dish. She has been working on the recipe lately and she has refined it to what I would consider perfection. We initially found the recipe in the Rao's Cookbook. You may or may not have heard of the restaurant. The chances are very good that I will never be able to eat there, being that it is only a ten table restaurant and all of the tables have standing reservations from now until eternity. Tables at Rao's are passed down in wills. I have cooked a lot of other food out of that book and featured it on this site. As we so often find, the recipes in books aren't always exactly how we like them. So we change the recipes over time to make the dish our own.

Rao’s Chicken Scarpariello

2 links hot Italian sausage

2 chicken breasts

1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper

½ onion, cut in sixths

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

6-7 Italian peppers in vinegar, half hot and half sweet, plus a little vinegar from each jar

½ cup dry white wine

½ cup chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste

A pinch of oregano

Heat a little olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium low heat. Cook peppers in casings until done. This takes several minutes and should not be rushed. Toward the end add chicken breasts cut thin in 3-4 inch pieces. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Sauté chicken until brown on both sides and cooked through. Remove meat from the pan and raise the heat to medium high. Deglaze the pan with the white wine. Add the bell peppers, onion and garlic and sauté well. The vegetables should caramelize. Add the vinegar peppers and vinegar, chicken broth and oregano. Slice the sausage and return it to the pan with the chicken. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until the sauce thickens.