Leave Me Alone, I'm a Family Man

Chicken Scarpiello

Potatoes, sausage and chicken in a briny, pickled pepper sauce.  This was so up my alley that I now place it in my imaginary list of dishes that I cook without fail.  The Sip and Feast site has changed up my chicken game a few times this year.  An Italian home cook without all the overdone heavy accented stereotype hype about the Italian ways. I'm talking to you, every Italian YouTube chef over 50!  

If you're someone who likes a jar of something pickled at the table, along with your dinner, like stuffed olives or Gardenia Mix, you will love this dish.  My only issue is the amount of pans it takes to make it. You brown the chicken on the stovetop and then a pan for the garlic and peppers, wine and stock. Then you have the roasting pans.  But sometimes, here and there we have it in us to throw caution to the wind and dirty a bunch of pots in order to achieve a dinner that's a step above.  

Sometimes you get the potatoes just right and they become crispy pillows

Jim, the Sip and Feast chef is a breath of fresh air in that he wears his heart on his sleeve.  You see all the love, frustration, fear, hurt and angst in his face as his young son rates his dinners at the end of the clips from 1 to 10.  His son and his whole family are adorable and it is rare to see anything real, that's also interesting these days. His wife makes appearances and is also refreshingly honest, not over doing it on her ratings.  She says what she thinks and I'm positive he drives her nuts but she's a good person and tolerates all of this madness, I imagine.  This new 'career' of being a YouTube star.  In my opinion video cooks make the mistake of trying to impersonate professionals but what we really want to see and hear is people cooking their own way.  There is an art to filming cooking segments in order for them to entertain as well as teach. It's good to see how it's done but we don't need to see onions chopped for 5 minutes with computer generated music behind it as if we're all dancing to it in our living rooms.  So, I give props to this Long Island family man.  I've learned a bunch from him this year and have enjoyed all of his slightly anal nerdiness.  He shares is family but does not exploit them.