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Early Morning Memories

A couple of weeks ago I woke up too early. With a cat on my left and another on my right, I looked at the clock. 5:30 a.m. Years ago I used to use an alarm clock to wake me up around 5:30 or 6 in the morning. There was a husband and daughter to feed and lunch bags to fill before we left for school and work; I also had to walk the dog, fill the bird feeders, and finish that first cup of coffee and the newspaper before I woke them up. These days I don’t use an alarm. I usually sleep until 7 or 7:30.

That morning I tried to go back to sleep and I eventually did, but not before nostalgia took me back to the late ’70s and later.

I thought about food, of course.

I remembered dinner parties with friends and what we cooked and ate. I remembered Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, the first novel I remember reading about feminism. In the early ’80s we gave up those chicken dishes topped with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom and served chicken with grapes and white wine.

We were pretty sophisticated, weren’t we?

Some years later, we were all using recipes from the first The Silver Palate Cookbook. I made pâté from scratch and red cabbage with brown sugar instead of the green beans casserole with that same mushroom soup at Thanksgiving. Then I thought of Chicken Marbella. We all made that for every dinner party and potluck get-together. Last week I made it in my Instant Pot, using the sauté button to sear the chicken, then changing it to its slow cooker. It was so easy (and still pretty sophisticated) even before we got our Instant Pots.

Here is that fabulous recipe.

Chicken Marbella

From Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, The Silver Palate Cookbook (Workman Press, New York, 1979)

4 chickens, 2 ½ pounds each, quartered

1 head of garlic, peeled and finely pureed

¼ dried oregano

coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

½ cup red wine vinegar

½ cup olive oil

1 cup pitted prunes

½ cup pitted Spanish green olives

½ cup capers with a bit of juice

6 bay leaves

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white wine

¼ cup Italian parsley or fresh cilantro, finely chopped

In a large bowl, combine chicken quarters, garlic, oregano, pepper and salt to taste, vinegar, olive oil, prunes, olives, capers and juice, and bay leaves. Cover and let marinate, refrigerated, overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Arrange chicken in a single layer in one or two large shallow baking pans and spoon marinade over evenly. Sprinkle chicken pieces with brown sugar and pour white wine around them.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, basting frequently with pan juices. Chicken is done when thigh pieces, pricked with a fork at their thickest, yield clear yellow (rather than pink) juice.

With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to a serving platter. Moisten with a few spoonfuls of pan juices and sprinkle generously with parsley or cilantro. Pass remaining pan juices in a saucepan.