Sunday, January 21, 2007

Spicy olive chicken delight

Easy, delicious and impressive chicken dishes to serve guests are always in short supply, so I thought I'd post some of the recipes I've tried and had success with. This spicy olive chicken is a real keeper and has fed many hungry guests at my Shabbat table. One of the nice things about it is that the quantities of ingredients aren't very important. If you love olives, you can add twice the amount called for, and if you love white wine, you can double that too. Use the quantities as a guideline, but flavor to your own tastes.
You will need a pot that's large enough to hold an entire cut up chicken, with most pieces fitting in one layer on the bottom.

Ingredients:
1 chicken washed, skin removed, cut into pieces
1.5 cups white wine
2 cups chicken stock
3 tables spicy chili oil
1 small jar of capers (about 1.5 handfuls)
1 1/4 cups chopped green olives
1 1/4 cups chopped black olives
salt & pepper
3 cloves of garlic minced
bunch of fresh parsley, chopped

Chili oil can be made by heating 1 cup of olive oil in a saucepan, adding 2 heaping teaspoons of chili flakes and simmering for 10 minutes...DO NOT BURN the flakes! Store in airtight container once cooled.

Method:

Wash chicken and remove skin. Pat dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Brown chicken in chili oil in a large pot on the stove for 5-7 minutes, adding more chili oil if necessary. Once chicken is browned, add chicken stock, white wine, olives, capers and minced garlic.

This should create a lot of liquid - enough to mostly cover the chicken. If there isn't enough liquid in the pot to actually boil the chicken, then add extra wine and stock.

Boil the chicken in the stock and wine mixture until chicken is cooked through. Add half the fresh parsley 5 minutes before you finish cooking the chicken.

Transfer chicken, sauce and all the olives and capers to a serving dish and sprinkle with remaining fresh parsley. Serve warm with rice.

This dish has very adult flavors. It's absolutely delicious, but kids at the table probably won't love it.

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