Chicken in Rustic Tomato sauce

• 2 bell peppers cut into strips
• 1 onion chopped coarsely
• 1 carrot diced
• 1 large celery or 2 small celery diced
• 1 medium summer squash, diced (yellow or zucchini)
• Kalamata olives to taste (I used about 1/4 cup)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp concentrated tomato paste (in the tube)
• 2 14-15 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 6 bone in skin on chicken thighs
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Olive oil
• Freshly grated Parmesan for garnish.

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Heat tbsp of olive oil until shimmering in large skillet. Add all the vegetables except garlic. Cook on medium, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking, until soft.
3. Add tomato paste and garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Be sure to not brown the garlic as it will taste bitter.
4. Add tomatoes and their juices. Stir to combine. Do not add salt to sauce. It will evaporate and may get too salty in the oven. Pour into 9×13 casserole dish.
5. Sprinkle chicken lightly with salt and pepper. Arrange chicken thighs on top of vegetables.
6. Bake 90 minutes (I know that seems excessive but the chicken is almost impossible to overcook and everything gets super yummy in that long cooking time)
7. Serve with pasta, roasted potatoes or risotto. Garnish with freshly grated Parmesan.

With all the home cooking I’ve been doing I find myself in a rut of the same old things, and I’m tired of expending effort to make new and exciting things. I wanted like a chicken cacciatore, but I didn’t want to work at it.

This was very low effort, and the long time in the oven meant I could clean what little needed to be cleaned (pretty much the cutting board and the skillet. And I got to use my favorite carbon steel pan since cast iron and tomatoes don’t get along). This is cooking for people who don’t cook.

Since pasta is so hard to find these days (during COVID19 lockdown), I’m saving the normal pastas for nights that I’m not available to cook. So tonight I cooked one sheet of lasagna noodle per person. (DeCecco lasagna no. 1 which are short). That was about 11 minutes to cook until done which I tell you because the package only tells you how to parcook it for making lasagna.

Roasted potatoes would also be an excellent gluten free choice for this.