Home. This is where this dish originates from. I'm originally from upstate NY (near Utica) and this area has its own selection of dishes that you can't find outside about an hour and a half radius from there. These include Halfmoons, Tomato Pie, and this posts Chicken Riggies and Utica Greens. I made these for my friends and their first question: What's a 'riggie'? Answer: a rigatoni, but 'riggies' is pure ecstasy, pair it with greens and you are out cold from a tastebud explosion. They actually have a Riggie-Fest where local restaurants compete to make the best riggies. The pictures may not do justice since I made the dishes at a friends house and had to take the picture the following day, since this is one of the few things I will eat leftovers of. A good thing with the riggies is that if you make a lot of it or have it left over, you can freeze it for later.
Chicken Riggies
1 pack of boneless chicken breasts (about 4 breasts), cubed
1 cup white flour
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1/2 cup cooking sherry
1 stick of butter
8oz canned mushrooms sliced
12oz can tomato sauce
12oz can chicken stock
8oz heavy cream
10oz can black olives, sliced
2 large green bell peppers, chunked
3 hot cherry peppers, finely sliced (more seeds for heat)
2 tsp garlic, minced
Parmesan cheese, grated
Salt, pepper, dried basil, dried parsley
- Melt butter in LARGE skillet, then add onion and cook until translucent on medium heat
- Coat chicken with flour, s&p, basil, parsley, then add to skillet and cook
- Add cooking sherry, mushrooms, olives, peppers, sauce, stock, garlic
- Stir and simmer for 20-30min (until peppers are soft)
- Add handful of cheese and container of heavy cream, stir and simmer for ~5min (add more cheese if thicker consistency desired)
- Serve atop rigatoni, and only rigatoni to be called true 'Chicken Riggies'
Utica Greens
2 large heads of escarole, chopped in large pieces
1 cup potato, cubed
1/2 cup onion, chopped
2 clove garlic, minced
6 slices prosciutto, chopped
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated romano cheese
1 cup chicken broth
2 long hot italian peppers, seeded and julienned
3 Tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper, parsley, italian seasonings
- In large skillet, combine 1T olive oil, potato, onion, salt, pepper, parsley, Italian seasonings on medium heat. Toss potatoes and onion to get coated. Leave on for about 10min until potatoes soft
- Clean and rinse escarole twice. Chop in large pieces. Place in skillet with potatoes to get wilted and tender for about 5min
- Remove escarole, potato, onion from skillet and place in bowl set aside for now
- Place remaining olive oil in pan along with the garlic, prosciutto, and hot peppers for about 5min
- Add escarole, potato, onion back into skillet along with the chicken broth tossing it for about 5min
- Gradually add in bread crumbs and cheese, mixing and tossing as added. Turn broiler on to get warm.
- Place the greens in casserole pan and cover lightly with bread crumbs and grated cheese. Place in broiler for about 5min or until crumbs/cheese gets toasted. Serve hot.
CHEF NOTES
- I could not find escarole in the south at all, so I used a combination of collard greens, endive and turnip greens.
Found a great new chocolate. This gem was tucked alongside the beer cooler near the cheeses. My favorite since I moved south has been the Olive and Sinclair chocolate that stone ground in Nashville. Also the Nashville Toffee Company makes awesome homemade toffee. This new brand is Vosges Chocolate! At first I looked at the boxes all hanging in rows and thought, what the hell is this? Come to find out, the story of the chocolatier is that she graduated from Vanderbilt University and traveled all around and founded the company with a concept of "Travel the World through Chocolate". The flavors I've tried so far are the Barcelona (hickory smoked almonds, sea salt, 45% cacao), Woolloomooloo (roasted and salted macadamia nuts, Indonesian coconut, hemp seeds, 45% cacao), Black Salt Caramel (black Hawaiian sea salt, bunrt sugar caramel, 70% cacao) and my favorite so far, Mo's Dark Bacon Bar (applewood smoked bacon, alderwood smoked sea salt, 62% cacao) - it's so good with little pieces of bacon in it. I can't wait to try more!
Final item of my recent WFA is Arctic Zero 'Ice cream'. I put ice-cream in quotes because it really isn't ice cream, it's lactose free, gluten free, and fat free. The best part is an entire pint (sold just like the Ben and Jerry pints) is only, get this, 150 calories, yes 1-5-0! They even market it saying you don't have to feel guilty for eating the whole pint! It's basically a frozen protein shake with water, whey, sugar cane sugar, guar gum and xantham gum, sea salt and monk fruit (calorie free sweetener, ancient Chinese secret). The flavors I've tried are chocolate, mint chocolate cookie, coffee, chocolate peanut butter, and my favorite so far, vanilla maple. They also make (and soon to try) strawberry, strawberry banana, cookies and cream and pumpkin spice.
