Sunday, September 20, 2009

Riffing on Chicken Marbella by bookseller

[The Silver Palate recipe for chicken marbella is here.]

The chicken dish really isn't terribly sweet. There's a...I don't want to call it a recipe, because I've made it (and seen recipes for it) with everything from chicken to chard to zucchini to spinach, and from Spain, Italy, Portugal...anyway, there's a WAY of cooking that works really well with both poultry and green veg and involves garlic, olive oil, raisins, and pine nuts or walnuts. Lots of all of them. It's incredibly delicious -- and oh, it works well with pasta, too! -- and the raisins are just sort of these surprising snippets of sweetness. Chicken Marbella is very much like that. Or like eating a hamburger with ketchup or sweet pickle relish.