While today’s recipe is from Tuscany, it is also thanks to a girl who went to my school. She lived outside town, in a big house with both a swimming pool and chickens. I never actually saw the house, or jumped in the pool, but I did hear about the chickens that lived in a cage at the bottom of the garden and laid more eggs than the family could eat. There was also the story about how, one day, this girl stopped her uncle from killing one of the chickens, which meant that for Sunday lunch they had roast potatoes, fried eggs and gravy made from Marmite. I remember being thrilled by this story, the idea that she had put herself between an uncle (with a gun, knife, rope, his bare hands? I had no idea) and the hen, therefore saving its life; and that, while the family ate Marmite gravy, the chicken ran free.
Scappato means run away, escaped, scarpered. It’s a nice thought that this recipe for penne con pollo scappato, or pasta with chicken that has fled the coop, was the result of a feisty young girl and a fortunate hen somewhere in Tuscany. It is probably more likely, though, that it was the result of no chickens at all. Along with Sicilian pasta con le sarde al mare (pasta with sardines still at sea) and Neapolitan spaghetti alle vongole fujute (spaghetti with clams that have fled), penne con pollo scappato is part of a family of recipes brought about my resourceful necessity. I have a book about Tuscan food that calls such recipes cucina del’ inganno, which translates as “cooking of deception”, but I think the meaning is slightly different in Tuscan – cunning, and also protective, something you do in order to make something as good as you can with whatever you have to hand. This one is certainly a clever recipe, the well-cooked soffritto of carrot, celery, onion and wine, mixed with rosemary, tomato concentrate from a tube and a long cooking time result in a flavour so deep that it is every bit as good as meat.
