Monday, October 12, 2009
Cooking the Books Best-Selling Chicken Cookbook? It's in the Bag
Posted by Carrington Fox on Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 8:24 PM
No one's ever mistaken me for a football fanatic, but in the spirit of Sunday's Titans game, I prepped a batch of Chicken Marbella, which--if you don't know it from The Silver Palate cookbook--you might know from the NBC Sunday Night Football Cookbook . I own the latter volume because, when it made its way into my house, I saw that Titans punter Craig Hentrich had contributed the recipe for Chicken Marbella (attributed to Silver Palate), and the hard-bound cookbook was a hell of a lot sturdier than the olive oil-stained photocopy of the Chicken Marbella recipe from The Silver Palate that was floating around my kitchen. So I kept it. I shelve it between Lidia's Italy and Barefoot Contessa, as a beefcake treat for the ladies.
Anyway, I digress.
Chicken Marbella is a rustic melange of olives, prunes, capers, garlic, oregano, oil, vinegar, bay leaves, brown sugar and white wine, baked for about an hour. At our house, we marinate it overnight in a freezer bag, so, naturally, we call it "Chicken in a Bag."
It's possibly the easiest food in the world to make. It's not exactly cheap--the capers alone cost more than the chicken--but you can make it ahead of time, and it is both comforting and complex. If only there were more foods like it.
Well, how hard can it be to throw a bunch of stuff in a freezer bag? Surely we could come up with a few more versions of Chicken in a Bag?
Bites team, this could be our ticket out of here: The Chicken in a Bag Cookbook. As for my contribution, I will offer Hen in the Fox House, a.k.a. Craig Hentrich's Chicken, a.k.a. The Silver Palate's Chicken Marbella.
What else can we include?
Comments (6)
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How was it? It looks like it would be cloyingly sweet based on the brown sugar involved.
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The Health Dept better not see that raw chicken sitting on that wooden cutting board. I'm just saying.
Last week I made chicken in a bag with just chicken and Newman's Own Sundried Tomato Vinaigrette. Marinated the chicken about 24 hours in fridge, browned in iron skillet, mixed in sliced onion and bell peppers, put lid on skillet and baked in oven until done. It was really good, and so easy! I suppose you could put all that in the bag and freeze too, and then just skip the browning step after you defrost.
Today I'm trying the bag method again, but today all I had to marinate with was soy sauce, maple syrup, and minced garlic. The fridge needs re-stocking. We shall see how it turns out! Supper Roulette is always an adventure.
Freezer bags are my go to method for flavoring meat, mainly because they don't leak very often.
I have found that some store bought marinades are pretty good in a pinch. Lawry's makes a decent Chipolte / Lime marinade, I've used it on shrimp with good success. Also, their Classic Steakhouse is pretty robust and very good on steak (obviously).
On recipezaar is a forum called Once a Month Cooking, where people submit recipes and plans for spending an entire day making and freezing. CHicken-in-a-Bag is a major food group there. Sometimes it's with apricot preserves and dijon mustard, sometimes with onion marmalade, etc. It's a chicken-in-the-bag recipe goldmine.
