Translating Italian food terminology is not quite as easy as one might think. As a language, Italian has many variations in terms of local words used for the same object or in the case, dish. This is the case for poultry or pollame, in my view. Pollo is the word for chicken and you can find many recipes for Polla alla Cacciatora or other similar everyday dishes. Pollastrina which is also a member of the same family can be translated as a hen or as chicken depending on your source.
Italians also tend to eat more game meats and fowl than the average American so words like fagiano (pheasant) and faraona (guinea fowl) are household names are is piccione (pigeon) and coniglio (rabbit). Some weeks ago the New York Times had a very cute bunny on the cover with an entire section dedicated to rabbit recipes. There was a slight uproar in certain corners because it was the first time people were actually talking about rabbit as a food in a national newspaper. No Italian would have been scandalized. This is the same for eating some internal meats such as kidneys (rognone), trippa (intestines) and fegato (liver). Not to mention brains (cervello) and other delicacies. If none of this strikes your fancy, go back to things like pollo which are easy to say and even easier to prepare. Check out this blog post for a great recipe.
Buon Appetito.
-Susannah Gold
The immense variety of fowl one can purchase in Italy is one of the reasons I like living in northern Tuscany for half a year over living in California. A nice piccione is a welcome change from chicken, and oh so different, especially if you live with someone who refuses to eat beef or pork (fantastic all over Europe because it hasn’t been engineered into “the other white meat”). When your butcher raises his own, it’s even better.
Even the number of different kinds of chicken found in larger markets will even astound (and confuse) a visitor from America, along with the many words to describe each of them.
And a final note: In the last ten years I’ve never seen anything “alla cacciatora” on a restaurant menu in Italy. I like the dish and I’ve made it in restaurants in California, but one wonders just why the hunter had to use a chicken and some garden variety peppers…
(Maybe it’s a joke on Americans)
james