{"id":489,"date":"2017-01-23T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=489"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:59:22","slug":"pollo-uccelleto-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/01\/23\/pollo-uccelleto-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollo all’Uccelleto (Chicken Little Bird Style)"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 23, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

I first tasted this dish in Tuscany in the little hill town of Benabbio, in September 1996.\u00a0 My husband\u2019s great Great Aunt Fidalma, Zia Fidalma, made it with little birds, sparrows actually, that her husband, Faliero, had shot.<\/p>\n

That was one of my most memorable meals in Italy.\u00a0 My husband and I had traveled to Italy with his parents.\u00a0 We stayed in a little hotel in the town of Fornoli where my father-in-law grew up.\u00a0 We alternated meals at the homes of numerous relatives throughout the area.<\/p>\n

It was wonderful sitting in Zia Fidalma\u2019s kitchen watching her put together components of the meal in that seemingly effortless way that happens in homes throughout Italy.\u00a0 We had saut\u00e9ed mushroom caps.\u00a0 Zia Fidalma foraged the mushrooms.\u00a0 I remember them sitting in a shallow box on the kitchen counter.\u00a0 She plucked a few out of the box, cleaned them.\u00a0 They were quickly saut\u00e9ed and seasoned with salt, pepper, and nepita.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t get a consensus on the spelling of nepita.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen it as gnebita, gnepita, and nepeta, among others.\u00a0 It is a variety of catmint.\u00a0 Zia Fidalma uses it to season mushrooms.\u00a0 It is a magical combination.<\/p>\n

We smuggled nepita seeds back from Tuscany on that visit, along with heirloom tomato seeds, both from Zio Faliero\u2019s garden.\u00a0 We\u2019ve grown both ever since.\u00a0 For 20-plus years we\u2019ve had nepita; first in our garden in Chicago (at the Rohkam House, where we lived starting in January 1996) and then subsequently at Villa Sentieri, in Santa Fe.<\/p>\n

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The Rohkam House when we lived there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Rohkam House shortly after it was built in 1887.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are only three components of that meal that I remember clearly, the mushrooms, the little birds, and the wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano brought out at the end of the meal for us to eat with fruit.\u00a0 I know there was a pasta but I can\u2019t remember what it was.\u00a0 The same is true for the side dishes (contorni, in Italian).<\/p>\n

My mother-in-law was in heaven with the little birds.\u00a0 She was sitting across the table from me. The meal had become languorous by then and it wasn\u2019t, somehow, inappropriate for me to pull out my video camera.\u00a0 Remember those?\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about dedicated video cameras with cassettes for recording, not phones or cameras with video capability.<\/p>\n

As she was reveling in her little birds (uccelleti, in Italian) I used my video camera to focus in on her.\u00a0 First on her face, but then ultimately on just her lips.\u00a0 Her lips filled the screen like the lips in the opening moments of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.\u00a0 There were those lips, sucking in little bird parts then extruding cleaned bones.\u00a0 Every now and then there was the occasional bit of bird shot that needed to be eliminated.<\/p>\n

To this day, that video footage is a kind of kompromat in our family.\u00a0 Thanks to President Trump for making that term common knowledge.\u00a0 My mother-in-law hates that video footage.\u00a0 I occasionally mention its existence and (vaguely) threaten to allow it to surface\u2026as I did for this post but, in the end, in the interest of domestic harmony, did not.

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Pollo all'Uccelleto (Chicken Little Bird Style)<\/h2>\n
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I first had this dish in Tuscany. It was made, literally, with little birds (blackbirds) bagged by my husband\u2019s Great Uncle Faliero. Since little birds are not easily available in the US, I rendered the dish using chicken after returning from the 1996 trip to Italy. I called it \u201cChicken Little Bird Style\u201d or \u201cPollo all\u2019Uccelleto.\u201d \r\n\r\nMuch to my surprise, years later, I discovered that Italians do, in fact, refer to this preparation as \u201call\u2019Uccelleto,\u201d and use it on things other than little birds (chicken, for example). What simply started out as Uccelleti, \u201cLittle Birds,\u201d became for me \"Pollo all\u2019Uccelleto,\" or \u201cChicken Little Bird Style.\u201d \r\n\r\nFrom Great Aunt Fidalma\u2019s kitchen to you is Chicken Little Bird Style. If you actually have little birds, by all means, give them a try. If not, chicken thighs are a great, if less gamey, substitute. \r\n\r\nUse good quality olives for this dish. If you don\u2019t have access to an Italian market, I suggest using olives from the olive and antipasto bar that is common in many supermarkets these days. I usually use half oil-cured black olives and half green olives, such as castelvetrano. I prefer using olives with pits.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>20 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span> 20 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>8<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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