French Fridays with Dorie - Chicken Basquaise (Poulet basquaise et Pipérade)

Today`s dish for the French Fridays with Dorie group is „Poulet basquaise et Pipérade“.

This is a delicious combination of chicken, sweet peppers and rice that is typical of all the regions around the Mediterranean. Well, as the name of the dish suggests, this is a dish from the Basque region of France. The first step is the preparation of Dorie´s recipe for Pipérade *  (basically a vegetable stew), a mix of onions,  sweet green and red peppers (I did not use green peppers but red and orange ones), tomatoes and garlic with the addition of some spicyness from piment d´ Espelette, the Espelette pepper, "Ezpeletako bipera" in Basque language and then some herbs, namely thyme and a bay leaf.  The second step is the browning of the chicken, some wine to get all the chicken flavor (without the fat) from browning the chicken. Then you add the browned chicken pieces to the Pipérade and cook the chicken nestled in the vegetable mix until the chicken pieces reach fall-off-the-bone doneness. It is customary to serve this dish with white rice but in a lot of different French versions of this popular recipe, I have also seen noodles or potatoes served alongside.

We had some oven-roasted cauliflower with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and capers alongside and I bought some fresh French baguette to mop up the remaining Pipérade.

This is a very colorful dish, bursting with glorious mediterranean flavours (for those pepper-tomato lovers) .It is easy to make and all of the ingredients are readily available.

When combined with rice, this is a superb supper any time of the year, again if you generally enjoy pepper-tomato based sauces. It is also fun to vary the heat of the dish with your pepper choices!

* Definition of Pipérade:
according to the "fooddictionary", this dish hails from the Basque region of France and has many versions that are always based on tomatoes and peppers cooked in olive oil with possible additions from onions, garlic, ham, bacon or other vegetables and even lightly beaten eggs. Pipérade can be served as a main dish as well as a side dish.

To see how the other Doristas prepared the “Poulet basquaise et Pipérade”, please click here.