Chicken Riggies

Update 12/24/2018: after making this dish again from my own recipe, I have realized that I am now a bit smarter about the process. So I updated to remove a couple of unnecessary ingredients and fix the method to be better all around.

Since the dawn of homo sapiens, when we first stood tall, emerged from our caves, and embarked on the great human experiment, we have begun to seek the answers to the great questions in life.  "Why are we here?  Do we have a purpose in life?  And what, really, is a riggie?"

Well, at long last one of these questions can be answered.  A riggie, coming from the Italian word "rigatoni", which in turn translates as "tube of extreme deliciousness" in a language I have not yet heard of, is a dish coming from the Utica / Rome area of upstate New York.  Only there would you take a tomato cream sauce, not unlike a vodka tomato sauce, but instead add both sweet and hot peppers, as if you were about to slather this stuff onto a cheesesteak or a hotdog, before going ahead and throwing in a few select proteins to toss with your pasta as originally planned.  The first time I encountered this dish was in Lansing, NY at Rogue's Harbor brewing company, who serves this under a section of NY state specialties.  I wish I could personally extend my thanks to the great man or woman who, on what must have been a very cold, somewhat alcohol-fueled night, decided to turn an otherwise classy, rich dish into a slightly less classy yet unbelievably satisfying assault on the senses.  Sweet, tart, velvety, warm, and hearty - a perfect meal for pulling the kids out of the snow, sloshing into wooden bowls, and mowing through by a roaring fire while you warm your bones.

I tried this dish from a recipe I dug up online few years ago with limited success - things just didn't come together, and the flavors weren't right.  The sauce broke, it wasn't the right mouthfeel, and it just lacked that well-rounded flavor that I was expecting.  But now, after a few more years of cooking and recognizing some flaws in the original recipe, I believe I have tweaked it into something altogether better, maybe suitable for entering into "Riggiefest", which I swear I am not making up.

Chicken Riggies
from various sources, fused together by me

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 tablespoons minced shallot (3 medium) or 1 small onion, minced
• 1.5 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast meat
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 (4 ounce) jar sweet red peppers or cherry peppers, drained and julienned
• 3-4 ounce jar hot banana peppers or cherry peppers, drained
• 1/2 cup fresh tomato sauce
• 2 tbsp dry sherry
• 10 pepperoni
• 4 ounces heavy cream
• 8 ounces uncooked rigatoni pasta
• Grated parmesan (optional), for plating
• Minced parsley (optional), for plating

Prep your setup.  Get the shallots and garlic minced and together in a small bowl.  Go for shallots instead of onions - live the dream.  It does make a lot of difference.  Cube the chicken into bite-sized pieces, about 1" to a side.  Not so small that they won't hold up in what is essentially a stew, and not so large that you have huge hunks of flesh floating around in there.  Chop up your peppers, which should be equal parts sweet and hot (hence the bold to differentiate above).  You could use roasted red peppers, but I prefer sweet cherry peppers.  For the hot, what I originally had and still prefer most is hot banana pepper rings, although you could use hot cherry here and roasted red for the sweet.  Whatever suits your taste, but keep the ratios the same.

In a large cast iron saucepan, heat oil and melt butter over medium heat.  At same time, start boiling water for your rigatoni. Add the garlic and shallots to the pan and saute until soft, then add the chicken, season with salt and pepper to taste, and saute for 8 to 10 minutes, or until halfway cooked. Don't brown the meat, just keep stirring until it's no longer pink.

Add peppers and stir in tomato sauce, reduce heat to low and simmer about 10 minutes. Now start cooking your rigatoni.  Back in the main pan, add the sherry and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Add the pepperoni and the heavy cream, and cook for 5 minutes. Do not use anything lighter than 'light' whipping cream - no half-and-half, no whole milk mixed with cream, nothing like that.  If you try to add anything but actual cream, this sauce will break, forming little fat bubbles separated from a watery mess.  So don't think that you can come up with a low-fat substitute for this - I've already tried, plus I cut the fat down in the first step, which originally called for double the amount of oil and butter.

When the pasta is just barely al dente, if not slightly before, set aside about a cup of the cooking water, drain the pasta, and immediately toss it into the sauce. Toss this together to finish cooking the pasta for 1-2 minutes in the sauce, adding in a few tablespoons of the reserved rigatoni cooking water to thicken and help the sauce cling to the pasta. Feel free to add more of the water if the sauce is still too thick, but not so much that it will become loose again.

After adding the cornstarch, observe how thick this is.  This picture from an earlier attempt.

To serve, plate into bowls, possibly with shredded parmesan, and top with finely minced parsley.  I took mine plain.  Try to find something healthy as a side, like a salad or something green.