Years ago, my buddy, Suze, gave me a copy of Trattoria Cooking, a fine cookbook for easy, authentic Italian meals. I've made her chicken cacciatore many times over the years. It's a great one-dish sort of meal. I've altered it a bit for my family, so that I have more sauce, which can cover pasta. The cookbook suggests serving polenta with the meal, which sounds good, too.

First, I get a whole cut up chicken. It's about 4 lbs of meat. Each piece of meat is covered in flour and browned in a skillet for about seven minutes in olive oil. (Note: I didn't cut up a whole chicken myself. You can buy it like that at the supermarket.)

Hopefully the remaining oil in the skillet has some nice browned flour in it and some nice chicken flavor. I take that oil and pour it into a bigger pot. (If the flour has gotten too brown, I dump it and use fresh olive oil.)

In that bigger pot, I add one diced large onion, 3 oz. of chopped pancetta , 3 cloves of minced garlic, and 2 tbs of fresh rosemary. I cook it for a while, until it's all soft and happy.

Then I put the chicken back in the pot with all the onions and stuff. Then, I turn the heat up high. I add 1 cup of dry Marsala. I go for the expensive stuff here, because it's such an incredible flavor. I like dry Florio Marsala, which is about $15 a bottle. We use it for other stuff, so it's worth it.

I let the Marsala cook for about five minutes, until it has been reduced quite a bit. Then I add two cans of GOOD crushed tomatoes. I bring the tomatoes to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium-low. It cooks for 40 to 50 minutes.

I love to use cellentini pasta with this. The sauce is very loose and gets into the tube shapes nicely.

And ta-da! It's dinner.