Smothered Chicken with Vegetable Jam

Similar to Provençal ratatouille, samfaina is an autumnal Catalan vegetable mélange eaten on its own or cooked with meats (I love it with pig’s feet). Along with escalivada (mixed grilled vegetables), it constitutes one of the foundations of Catalan cooking. While the French cook the vegetables together into a kind of jam, many Catalan cooks insist that samfaina requires each vegetable to be fried separately over a lively heat, then cooked together briefly. It takes a l