Κοτοπουλο Κοκκινιστο - Chicken in Tomato Sauce

This dish comes from Hellas and is a very common one there. The only modification that I have made is that I used canned tomatoes instead of fresh ones. My mom used to make it and I would grab a loaf of bread and use it for dipping purposes. Ahhhh, the good old days when I was thin and my metabolism (metabolism is a Hellenic word, μεταβολή, and means change) worked like a Swiss clock.

Here are the ingredients for this recipe:

• one whole chicken, cut up, 
• two tablespoons of olive oil,
• two medium onions,
• garlic to taste, I used six cloves,
• three small zucchini, 
• two bell peppers, 
• one 28 oz can on diced tomatoes,
• two tablespoons tomato paste, 
• one cup of red wine, 
• oregano to taste.

In the image below I mistakenly included cinnamon instead of oregano. Oops.

In my 5 quart pan I added the olive oil and heated it up in medium heat.

After a few minutes the onions and three minutes later I added the garlic. I used my handy dandy garlic press for this. I let the onion get hot first because I don't want to burn the garlic. If I add the garlic right from the beginning I may burn it.

While the garlic and onion were getting to know each other I removed the chicken from the package, saved the wings and back in a container to make my next chicken stock. I wash it and removed the skin and as much of the fat as I could and I added the chicken to the pot. The image below shows the chicken parts without the skin. Don't you worry, though, because I removed most of that fat. Also, in the background you can see the contained with the two wings and the back ready to go into the freezer.

Here is the chicken in the pot.

 

After I browned the chicken for a few minutes I added the wine. The only wine I had in the refrigerator was Marsala wine and that's what I used. I let the heat burn the alcohol. 

I sliced the zucchini in small, cylindrical shapes and the peppers in narrow slices and I added all of them in the pot.

Then, I added 3/4 of the tomato sauce in the pot and I added two tablespoons of the tomato paste into the remaining tomato sauce and stirred it up well in order to dissolve it. After it dissolved, I added it to the pot.

Here is the pot with all of the ingredients. At this point I added some oregano. I made sure that tomato sauce was nicely incorporated throughout the pot.

I set the timer to 60 minutes and I let the heat do it's job. I stirred it up a few times and an hour later I checked the internal temperature of one of the breasts and it was 165 °F. I had to taste it to make sure that the taste was acceptable. Bingo wingo!

Even Raspy loved it. Here she is licking herself after her meal. This cat is spoiled and I am the problem, conversely, if I don't feed her well she will bite me. What can I do?

This was a huge success and even my toughest critic liked it, and I don't mean Raspy.

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