Pollo con i peperoni

There is one dish Romans traditionally eat on Ferragosto, the 15th of August, which is reliably the hottest day of the Italian calendar, a day when the city empties out, the tarmac goes soft, and any sane person is lying motionless in a dark room with the shutters closed. That dish is chicken stewed with peppers over a flame for the better part of an hour. Nobody has ever explained this to my satisfaction.

The theory, offered with total confidence by everyone in Rome and supported by nothing, is that peppers are at their absolute peak in mid-August, so you cook them in mid-August, and if the kitchen reaches the internal temperature of a pizza oven then that is simply the cost of doing business. There is a second theory, which is that Romans quite enjoy suffering and calling it tradition. Both can be true at once.

What is definitely true is that pollo coi peperoni is one of the great cheap dinners. Chicken thighs, which cost roughly a third of what breasts cost and taste about three times as much of chicken. Peppers, which collapse over half an hour into something sweet and silky and completely unlike the squeaky raw versions in a supermarket salad. Tomato, garlic, and a splash of vinegar at the end to stop the whole thing going flat. It is a dish designed by people who had one pot, several mouths, and no interest in washing up twice.

For the purposes of this book, though, the important property is what happens overnight. The peppers keep softening, the sauce thickens, the chicken lets go of a little more of itself into the pot, and Wednesday's lunch is better than Tuesday's dinner. Very few dishes genuinely improve in a fridge. This one does it so reliably that I now make it a day early on purpose, which the Romans would probably consider cheating, and which I intend to keep doing.