When I checked the news yesterday on CNN’s website, I was so happy to see this article about how wine is great for you. Yeah! One less thing to feel guilty about! I love wine and probably drink more than the average person, mostly due to the fact I’m around it more than the average person. My husband works for a wine producer here in the Veneto and it seems we are constantly talking about it, drinking it or hiking around vineyards and wine stores looking for it. It definitely plays a large part in our lives. Even our kids have begun to take a abnormal interest in it, but we think that’s cool. They’ll either be very sophisticated wine drinkers or raging alcoholics by the time they’re 20, let’s hope for the first one. Wine in our home is just about as important as the food we serve it with and I can’t imagine having a nice dinner without a nice glass of wine to accompany it.

Yes, I drink wine almost every day and I cook with it a lot too. When I first started cooking with wine, I was really shy about now, but now I’m shameless, throwing it in when ever a sauce, soup or risotto call for liquid or starts to look the teeniest bet try. It adds nice flavor and I just love the smell when you first add it to your sauce. We invented this recipe this summer and we use quite a bit of wine in it, but if you don’t drink or don’t have wine on hand, you can substitute another liquid such as broth or water. This recipe is very much about what you have on hand, so just take it as a general idea and play with it all you want. It always manages to come out good.

Drunken Chicken otherwise known as Chicken with Vegetables

1 chicken, cut into about 8 piece, you could do more or less, just change the size of your pan
2 potatoes, 1/2 inch cubes
2 or 3 carrots, 1/2 inch chunks
1 onion, quartered and then sliced in 1/2
2 or 3 stalks of celery, 1/2 inch chunks
optional additions: artichokes, peas, shallots, leeks, parsnips, red or yellow peppers, what ever you have on hand or that’s in season
1/4 cup olive oil
white wine or broth
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Arrange the chicken in a 9×11 baking pan. Arrange the vegetables artfully around the chicken pieces. Drizzle olive oil onto chicken and vegetables and then pour enough wine into the pan to fill it up about 1/3 up the sides. Salt and pepper. Put pan into the oven and cook for about and hour and a half or until the chicken is cooked through, stirring occasionally.

If you are using peas or something that will cook faster than the vegetables, add them in later in the cooking time so that don’t get overcooked.

Serve it with a glass of a light red wine, like Valpolicello or a Cotes d’Rhone.