Montalcino Chicken and Buttered Gnocchi

This weekend has been such an absolute disaster, I'm rather surprised my house didn't catch fire. I tried my best to pretend like I didn't exist, but how could I neglect you, solitary reader? And so I present a dish near the end of my Rachael Ray cookbook: Montalcino Chicken with Figs and Buttered Gnocchi with Nutmeg. Alas, a more fitting title would be Jacob's Creek Chicken without Figs and Buttered Gnocchi with Nutmeg. Rachael Ray married in Montalcino, Italy and she requests a Rosso di Montalcino red wine for this meal. As you could surmise, I used a Jacob's Creek Shiraz instead. First, the preparatory ingredients:

The well-trained eye will notice the pancetta! Only one grocery in my area carries pancetta and only diced. This recipe actually calls for thick, sliced pancetta, but I'll just have to do without, since I live in hell's northern retreat. Gnocchi (which, as it turns out, no one in the world knows how to pronounce) is an Italian dumpling. When boiled, it's soft and chewy. The two herbs on the cutting board are chives (top) and parsley (bottom). The chicken has been dredged (yep, that's a cooking term) through flour. The meal is cooked in two parts - and simultaneously if you're talented: the chicken and vegetables, and the gnocchi [See why the Oxford comma is necessary? -Ward].

The pancetta is cooked first (and, diced, it cooks fast) then set aside. Grill the chicken on both sides for a few minutes and push to the edge of the skillet to add the sliced onion and crushed garlic. Figs are not in season as I write this, but if they were, or if you were mentally capable enough to remember things, you could add your substitute now. I, however, forgot. Sauté for a few minutes and then add some quantity of wine. Rachael's recipes, when they call for wine, always turn out normal looking. Mine turn out as if I bled all over them (and if you're aware of what I did with scissors Friday, this would not be a bad bet). Once the wine has cooked down, add a bit of chicken stock, the parsley, and "zest of 1 lemon". When you feel that this has been done sufficiently, remove it from heat.

While you're cooking the chicken and vegetables, boil water and add your preferred quantity of gnocchi. Gnocchi will boil quite fast depending on how much you're preparing. Once softened, add it and/or them to a small sauce pan that has been melting butter. Season with the chives and nutmeg and sauté until slightly brown. Once finished, combine the chicken with the pancetta and gnocchi and serve. Delicious! OK, a word of warning before you click on the larger version of this final image: sliced onions cooked in red wine look exactly like earthworms.