In London the other day, we were sitting in Clare and Robbie’s small garden on a balmy summer evening when he brought out dinner from the kitchen. The chicken was divine, with a gentle tang that made you wish there was more of the juice to dip the bread in. I asked Robbie, a superb cook, for the recipe and he told me it was from a recent Italian cookbook he had acquired called Five Quarters by Rachel Roddy. I made a mental note and bought a copy a couple of days later.

It turned out that the dish I had so enjoyed was a variant of chicken alla cacciatora, or hunter’s style chicken. Legend has it that Italian hunters would skin, clean and cut up the rabbit or pheasant they had shot, brown it in a pan in olive oil with some onion and garlic, and simmer it with chopped tomatoes and local herbs until the meat was tender. A very simple recipe with regional and seasonal variation.

The version favoured by Agha Imran Hamid, my foodie friend and guru, also contains sliced mushrooms and lots of tomatoes. I have enjoyed it many times in Islamabad, especially in winter when this hearty Italian dish is more welcome.

Mopping up the juices of a variant of chicken alla cacciatora leads to some experimental bread-baking

When compared to the slightly more elaborate recipes, Rachel Roddy’s version is simplicity itself. For a one and a half to two kilogramme chicken cut into 12 pieces, you will need five tablespoons olive oil, two cloves of garlic, one red chilli or one teaspoon of crushed red chilli flakes, a sprig of rosemary, a couple of glasses of white wine. If available, water will do, if not, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, a handful of pitted black olives, salt and freshly ground pepper.

Place the meat in a large casserole and fry in the oil over medium heat, browning both sides. This will take around 20 minutes. Meanwhile, finely chop the garlic and chilli, and strip the rosemary needles or you can use crushed dried rosemary at a pinch. Once the meat has browned, sprinkle garlic, chilli and rosemary over it, and pour in the wine, season with salt and pepper, cover the pan and turn the heat down to low.

Cook the meat until it is tender, turning the pieces over once in a while. Depending on the chicken, it should cook in around an hour, and have thick gravy around it. If the pan gets too dry, add some wine or water. In the last few minutes of cooking, add vinegar and olives, giving everything a good stir. Serve hot with thick slices of good bread. I plan to get some rabbit and try the recipe this weekend.

Ever since I read about the health benefits of sourdough bread, I have been eating no other kind. Robbie has been making it for some time after he took a baking course and turns out delicious loaves regularly. Basically, you use natural yeast that exists in flour and in the air. This is a slow process, and was the way bread was first baked by our ancestors. Once you have developed the starter, you can use some for getting your flour to rise, while saving the rest. One bakery in San Francisco has been using the original starter yeast since it went into operation in 1849.

Robbie gave me a bit of his starter when I went to Canada for three weeks in August, and I followed his emailed instructions as best I could, guessing at quantities in the absence of kitchen scales. The result was nice, chewy bread, but the loaf lacked the professional touch Robbie has mastered. I watched him in his kitchen making another batch, and am gearing up to try and make a couple of loaves.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 9th, 2016