Classic Marbella goes modern
I was 4 years old in 1982, the year that “The Silver Palate Cookbook” was published. My mother was 29, about to become pregnant with her third child, and she, like so many other stay-at-home moms of her era, owned a copy of the red paperback, written by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. In it, the duo shared recipes for the food they sold at their New York City specialty-food shop of the same name, introducing Americans to spicy sesame noodles, poppy seed vinaigrette and chèvre tarts.
The most sauce-stained page in my mother’s copy is the recipe for chicken Marbella, a marinated-then-baked chicken with capers, green olives and prunes. Like Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon, Rosso and Lukins’ chicken Marbella was undoubtedly part of the repertoire of many cooks of that generation, and its legacy endures: My mother made it for guests just last week.
When I set out to write my own cookbook, I had “The Silver Palate” on my mind. Not only because the book has sold upwards of 2.5 million copies, but because it was indispensable and reliable. It made a promise to people — that good, homemade food was within reach — and it kept it, delivering well-tested recipe after well-tested recipe.
For all its loveliness, “The Silver Palate Cookbook” is beginning to show her age. Our pantries and palates have expanded. The time we allot to dinner has decreased. And, in the case of chicken Marbella, we’re just no longer in the habit of dumping a cup of brown sugar on top of our poultry.
Improving on a classic is tricky business, and I didn’t really mean to try. But one night a few weeks ago I had some bone-in chicken thighs to use. I set out to make a quick stovetop braise, seasoning the meat with salt and pepper, then adding some olive oil, vinegar and a few crushed garlic cloves to marinate the meat.
I browned the chicken, then followed standard braising protocol: cooked an onion in the residual fat, deglazed the pan with white wine, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pot, and added chicken stock. Except this time, Marbella on my mind, I tossed in a handful of pitted Castelvetrano olives. I added the vinegar-y marinade, crushed garlic and all, and then, thinking to temper the brininess of the olives and sharpness of the vinegar, a tablespoon of brown sugar to Marbella’s cup. I returned the chicken to the pot to cook. I didn’t have prunes. Instead, I stirred in some quartered sweet-tart fresh apricots, which turned jammy, sweet and soft.
In under an hour I had dinner, and a modern version of an old favorite.