Without being an area at all famous for its birds, the Costa del Sol in Malaga has two chicken dishes registered in the great book of universal gastronomy.
One is the Pantoja chicken, created by Isabel Ídem and served in her short-lived La Cantora restaurant in Fuengirola.
The other is the Marbella chicken, which was born in a food store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and triumphed as the shoulder pads in the New York of the eighties.
Chicken a la Pantoja, with its tomato sauce and beer, is only cooked at the singer's house and at the home of the deranged people who treasure her legendary book
Recipes with art.
La Cantora was a resounding failure as a business, it closed in 2005 and today - sad fate - it has become the Wok Directo Fuengirola.
The Silver Palate also disappeared as a store - not as a brand of sauces and other packaged products - in 1993, but its
chicken Marbella
is experiencing a mini-revival after receiving the compliments of prestigious magazines and the occasional star chef.
This chicken was the first entrée to be cooked at the deli, which opened in 1977. The Silver Palate was a rarity in its day as it was run by two women, a caterer (Sheila Lukins) and an executive. advertising (Julee Rosso), and also because he proposed a gastronomic model that avoided the French canon to bet on Italian, Spanish or Asian.
Pesto, arugula or balsamic vinegar were sold there when outside of Italy I had not heard of them or tato.
The store was a resounding success, and its final consecration came in 1982 with the publication of The Silver Palate Cookbook.
The
New York Times
called it "the book of revelations," and according to
Bon Appétit
magazine
, it
"changed the way Americans cook."
Not only did it open the doors to a new catalog of ingredients and techniques from the Mediterranean, but it also put an end to the idea that to make a successful dish you had to spend hours and hours in the kitchen.
They were simple recipes that gave the hit, because their result seemed very elaborate.
Lukins and Rosso sold the business in 1988, but their legacy lives on in the star dishes of their cookbook, such as Marbella chicken.
Today it doesn't sound as refined and exotic as it did in its golden years, and it might even be considered old-fashioned food, but it still has fans.
Three years ago,
Bon Appétit
editor
Christine Muhlke called it “the gold standard” of The Silver Palate's cuisine, while Yotam Ottolenghi published his own adaptation in
Simple
in 2018. Despite being a hodgepodge of Italian influences, Spanish and Moroccan, asado continues to represent the two best virtues of New York store recipes: maximum simplicity in preparation and succulent on the plate.
The original version of the Marbella chicken has capers, olives, dried plums, bay leaf, dried oregano and a significant dose of brown sugar.
Ottolenghi exchanges plums for dates;
the dried oregano, for fresh, and eliminate the sugar.
After a couple of tests, my adaptation also dispenses with sugar, sticks with a combination of plums and dried apricots and introduces some more novelties: sherry vinegar, oloroso wine instead of white wine and olives stuffed with anchovy to enhance the flavor of the sauce.
If you want to look like a good cook without sticking or stamping, this is your recipe.
Difficulty
For headless chickens (but who remember to marinate two days in advance).
Ingredients
For 6 people
6 chicken hindquarters with whole skin (thigh and thigh, about 2 kg approximately)
100 g pitted prunes
100g dried apricots
100 g of olives stuffed with anchovy
3 tablespoons capers
1 teaspoon of honey
3 garlic cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried oregano
150 ml of fragrant wine
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Salt
Black pepper
Preparation
Dissolve the honey in the wine.
Put all the ingredients in a bowl or lid: the chicken, the plums, the apricots, the olives, the capers, the garlic cloves peeled and crushed with the side of a knife, the bay leaf, the oregano, the vinegar, the wine with honey, and a teaspoon of salt and black pepper.
Mix everything so that the chicken is well impregnated.
Cover and leave in the fridge for one or two days.
Heat the oven to 180 degrees with a fan (200 if the oven does not have one)
Put the chicken skin side up and the marinade with all its ingredients in a baking dish.
Dry the chicken skin well with kitchen paper to promote browning.
Bake 20 minutes.
Lower the temperature a little (to 160 with fan or 180 without) and leave for 40 more minutes, or until the chicken is done and the meat is well separated from the bone.
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.