Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Chicken Marbella

To honor the memory of Sheila Lukins, I prepared one of her most beloved recipes for dinner last weekend: Chicken Marbella.

The recipe can be found here. Of course I can never leave well enough alone and doctored it a bit. I had half a jar of marinated artichoke hearts in the fridge so added them, plus about half a box of crimini mushrooms, sliced. I also cooked it in a skillet on the stovetop rather than in the oven.

The dish had a wonderful sweet/savory flavor, but it was extremely oily. I had to pour the cooking liquid into a glass measuring cup and add a handful of ice cubes to de-grease it. If I make this again, I will skip the olive oil in the marinade AND remove the skin from the chicken.

Under the chicken is Mr Minx's outrageous saffron pilaf. Forget the chicken - the pilaf is good enough to make a fabulous meal on its own, probably because of the decadent amount of butter he uses. God it's good. And the bounty of tiny tomatoes from our garden added a bit of acid to the dish when marinated in a little red wine vinegar and olive oil. With a (couple of) glass(es) of chardonnay, this was a near-perfect meal.

2 comments:

deirdre said...

Came across your RIP on Sheila Lukins (for whatever reason it was linked to-can't remember, but I DO remember I didn't see the semblance...anyway)you had a link to her chicken recipe and my question is did you use the whole bird like the recipe (btw-I've never seen a 2 1/2lb bird). Just wanted to know if you took the white meat out first. When I read the comments on the recipe no one seemed to mention this but everyone loved it. Just wanted your take. PS--wish I knew about the ice-cube-in-drippings-trick to raise the fat this thanksgiving Oh well, next year. Thx for having such an awesome blog, btw....

theminx said...

Hi Deirdre,

I didn't wrestle with a whole chicken - just used chicken thighs. Breast meat is too finicky to cook, so I seldom bother with it. :)

Ever notice how when you put leftover pot roast or something else fatty in the fridge, the fat usually congeals on the top? The ice cube trick works in the same way, but much faster!

Thanks for reading!