Chicken with Red Peppers

Name: Chicken with Red Peppers (Polio Chilindrón)
Yield: Serves 4-6
Cuisine: Spain
Ingredients: 75g (3oz) serrano ham, diced (or you could use lean bacon); Chopped fresh parsley or coriander, to garnish; 4 tablespoons olive oil; 1.5kg (3½lb) free-range, corn-fed chicken, jointed into small pieces like the Spanish do; 1 onion, chopped; Salt; 1 bay leaf; 2-3 red peppers, cored, seeded and sliced into 1.25cm (½ inch) wide strips; 3-4 cloves of garlic, roughly crushed; Freshly ground black pepper; 450g (1lb) tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped (or be lazy and use a 397g [14oz] can chopped tomatoes, drained); 1 sprig of fresh thyme

Polio Chilindrón

Preparation info

Serves
4-6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Floyd on Spain

By Keith Floyd

Published 1992

About

This dish traditionally comes from Aragon in north-east Spain, an arid but dramatic and vividly coloured province. Great battles were fought there with the Moors in the Middle Ages. Anyway, this is not a history lesson, but an introduction to a delicious recipe for what some might call the ubiquitous chicken, to be found all over Spain.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons olive oil
1.5kg (3½lb) free-range, corn-fed

Europe
Spain
Main course
Gluten-free
Mediterranean

Method

Heat the oil in a large shallow casserole or heavy-based pan that has a lid. Fry together the chicken pieces, garlic and onion for about 3-5 minutes until they begin to turn golden, then push them to one side of the pan. Add the ham (or bacon) and peppers and fry these for a minute or so until the peppers soften slightly, then stir everything in the pot together. Stand back and admire the brill