RIGGIE NATION

supreme comfort pasta

mfw i’m getting a headache

Aries season is almost over which means almost all of my birthday celebrations are behind us, and, yes, I took two weeks off here instead of one, I’m sorry but I had a really good excuse as I spent most of last week hanging out with a really adorable pair of twin infants. (The result of this was not a desire towards motherhood [phew] but simply a desire to have more babies around—someone, please, hand me another infant.) I made a lot of soup for their parents, and finally sampled Skyline Chili, which Jo wisely compared to moussaka, with its hint of cinnamon.

Last week I published an essay in Curbed about living and cooking with a tiny kitchen, which in the grand Laurie Colwin scheme of things isn’t that tiny, but has significantly altered my cooking life over the last seven years. I also got to write about my ambivalence re: the Nancy Meyers Kitchen Industrial Complex and my lusty feelings towards the home kitchen in Eat Drink Man Woman. I hope you’ll read the essay, it was a lot of fun to write, reviews have been positive so far, this is the link!

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I’d heard the whisperings of chicken riggies once or twice before, but recently Jackson amplified those whispers into an insistent chorus, chanting into my ear. Chicken Riggies. Chicken Riggies. What if we made chicken riggies tonight?

In his ongoing quest towards culinary mastery (knowing how to cook lots of different kinds of pasta and pork chops) Jackson has found a new Guy. Do any of you know “Sip and Feast”? Apparently he is some man who lives on Long Island and makes YouTube videos that my boyfriend cannot stop watching.¹ When you google him, this image comes up. When I received a beautiful bottle of olive oil for my birthday, Jackson watched eagerly as I opened it, and quickly added, unable to stop himself: Sip and Feast says this is the only finishing olive oil he uses! To their credit, it’s very good.

I refuse to watch any Sip and Feast videos because I have a very low tolerance for food YouTube. Kenji’s GoPro videos make me feel like those people who left Blair Witch screenings after getting motion sickness. The way that man on the hot sauce show asks questions makes me more embarrassed than a family friend asking me if I’m still blogging. I can stomach Claire and little else. But somehow, a video of a man with strong eyebrows in Long Island making a dish called CHICKEN RIGGIES showed up on my boyfriend’s computer in Brooklyn, and now the recipe is all either of us can talk about.

Chicken Riggies is a pasta dish with origins in Utica, NY². It combines the blanketing tomato-creaminess of rigatoni alla vodka and the hot cherry pepper zing of chicken scarpariello. It’s also the rare chicken-pasta recipe that feels logical and non-punitive. (Here at Mess Hall HQ we care about macros but do not let them run our lives!) It feels like the sort of thing you’d cook if you had three teenage sons and all of them were on the lacrosse team. It feels like the sort of thing you’d bring to a potluck if you wanted to steal the show. A hearty meal for growing boys and muscle mommies alike. It is rich and hearty but probably won’t put you to sleep. And this version of the recipe that I’ve made this week, that I’ll probably remake next week (there’s a lot of chicken in my freezer and half a tub of cream in my fridge)—hides unusually hefty pieces of garlic, cooked enough to soften their bite but burly enough to stand out against heat, cream, pepper, and tomato. These garlic pieces are revelatory, Jackson said, in complete earnest, cradling his second bowl on the couch.³ They look like tiny irregular boulders, a shape I’d never considered before, never been bold enough to toss into a pan.

not the most photogenic pasta and i mean that as a compliment

This is such a funny time of year to write about food. We’re supposed to be heralding the coming days of spring with “leggy asparagus” and “verdant pea tendrils” or whatever—and listen, I did moan a little loudly over a plate of morel toast at Inga’s last week after spotting Jeremy Strong at a back table, and this week I ate a charred ramp at a party—but as I write this the sky is grey, the rain is coming, and I need to put a sweater on. It is the last gasp of cozy-food weather, the perfect time to make an obscene amount of creamy chicken pasta before the thought makes you sweat. The dish at its most basic (meat, pasta, heft) reminds me of a former roommate who would sometimes make herself a pan of turkey tetrazzini at the beginning of the week. We’d find ourselves creeping into the kitchen for one, two, three more spoonfuls from the baking dish, lulled by the blankets of food layering atop themselves in our stomachs as we lay on the couch and said it’s too good, it’s too good. I thought the riggies ⁴ would last us a solid 48 hours but they didn’t make it a second night in the fridge. Even cold, the dairy fat unloosened and the sauce overly thick, it begged for one two three more bites, an extra helping for snack, a stolen noodle from the other’s bowl. Each serving found me snooping inside my mezze rigatoni—perfect pasta shape—to see what it hid: nub of garlic, bite of chicken, burst of pepper, wisp of herb.

A simple dish this is not, but if you like to spend your evenings chopping and puttering while drinking vermouth and soda it will make you very happy. And if you have someone to cook with, all the better: one person chops while the other sears the chicken, and dinner is ready in 30 minutes. And then you’re ready to join me as a card carrying member…………of #RiggieNation :)

Chicken Riggies

Chicken Riggies!

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Very slightly adapted from Sip and Feast; serves 6

1/4 cup olive oil
1 lb rigatoni
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
8 cloves garlic, very roughly chopped into large pieces
2 red bell peppers, sliced
5 pickled hot cherry peppers (like B&G), chopped roughly into 1-inch pieces, seeds and stems removed
1 cup dry white wine (see note)
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes (you can also use whole tomatoes, and crush by hand or with kitchen shears)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated pecorino cheese
1/4 cup basil or parsley leaves

If you’ve got the time, salt your chicken up to 24 hours in advance. If you don’t just pat them dry and season generously with salt and pepper on both sides.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; it should taste salty like the sea.

In a dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of oil over medium heat until it begins to shimmer. Sear the chicken—you’ll likely have to work in batches—until cooked through, about 5 to 6 minutes per side. Remove the chicken and set aside.

If your pan is looking a bit dry, add a splash more oil. Add the bell peppers and cook until they brown, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 2 more minutes, until it begins to look golden.

Next, add the cherry peppers, cook for 1 minute, then add the wine. Turn heat to medium-high, and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, until the liquid reduces by half. Deglaze the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, to loosen any remaining delicious brown bits. Drop the pasta into the boiling water, and cook until it’s a minute shy of al dente—it should have the bite of a very firm piece of gum.

Add the tomatoes and turn the heat back down to medium. Cook the sauce over a lively simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the cream and mix to incorporate. Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Once the sauce starts to thicken, add the chicken. If you need to, turn the heat down while you wait for the pasta to finish.

Before you drain the pasta, reserve a cup of pasta water. Then drain the pasta and add to the sauce, mixing to coat it. If the mixture feels too thick, add the pasta water a quarter cup at a time. Remember that cream sauces tend to “seize” more than other pasta sauces, meaning that the sauce will thicken and become less liquidy once it’s on your plate. Cook until the pasta is al dente—this should take a minute or three—then turn off the heat.

Add the pecorino and mix to combine, adding another splash of pasta water if you feel the need. Add the basil right before serving, and if you don’t have basil, you can just use parsley. Serve with plenty of fresh cracked black pepper, and a salad if you’re feeling virtuous.

Note: Any time I don’t finish a bottle of wine and it’s begun to turn, I just leave it in the fridge (well sealed) until I need some cooking wine; I used that here, and it was great. Especially if it’s not total swill, and especially if it’s not the leading flavoring agent in your dish, it will be completely fine to cook with for the next month or so. Finishing a bottle of wine can occasionally be a bit of a burden, especially if you live alone. This dish is expensive enough; you don’t always need to buy a new bottle.

1. I think Jackson’s relationship to S+F parallels my relationship to Woks of Life: absolute deference, lifelong loyalty, a gleeful foisting of my dinner plans into their hands.

2. Also hailing from Utica and new to me is Utica Greens, which I’m desperate to try once we get escarole at the market.

3. Is this too much boyfriend content? Jackson believes that his introducing chicken riggies to my household has earned him a starring role in this week’s Mess Hall and like it or not that’s how things turned out! Chicken Riggies: a cure for heteropessimism?

4. I generally have a deep aversion to cutesy food abbreviations—don’t get me started on “Morty D”—but something about riggies is too fun not to say. It forces the mouth into a smile; it sounds like a friendly tease. RIGGIES!!!!!