This recipe from the famous Silver Palate cookbook, reduced by me to feed 4 rather than 6-8 at table, is absolutely delicious. It beautifully combines the brininess of olives and capers, with the sweetness of dried prunes and brown sugar. I know! Say what?

But you just have to trust me when I tell you that this combination of flavors is amazing. And the great thing about this dish is that it is stinkin’ easy to build. You marinate the chicken one day, and bake it off the next. The chicken is succulent and the sauce is fresh tasting and unique and positively divine served over mashed potatoes.  

I loved this snippet from an article published on May 6, 2007 by Christine Muhlke in The New York Times, so I thought I would share it with you.

“If there’s such a thing as boomer cuisine, it can be found in the pages of “The Silver Palate Cookbook.” With its chirpy tone and “Moosewood”-in-the-city illustrations, the book, published in time for Mother’s Day in 1982, gave millions of home cooks who hadn’t mastered the art of French cooking the courage to try sophisticated dishes like escabeche, wild mushroom soup and that new thing called pesto. Years later, mothers sent their grads into the world with their raspberry-vinaigrette-stained copies. And now, with the 25th-anniversary edition, a new generation will try dishes like chicken Marbella, which once seemed as risky (capers! prunes!) as the East Village.The Silver Palate was born of the women’s movement. The co-authors, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, a caterer and an advertising executive respectively, realized that they couldn’t have it all and dinner too. (“There were school schedules, business appointments, political activities, art projects, sculpting classes … weekends in the country or at the beach. … It was much too much,” they later wrote.) If they couldn’t be wonder women, they figured, who could? So just days after the blackout of ’77, they filled the niche with a nook: the Silver Palate, an 11-by-14-foot shop on New York’s Columbus Avenue stocked with tarragon chicken salad, ratatouille, salmon mousse and brownies made from scratch. “The city was primed,” Lukins said recently over lunch in Manhattan. Indeed, that same year the gastro-temple Dean & DeLuca also opened. At the time, two women opening a business together was “wild,” Lukins said. So were blueberry chutney, pâté maison and poppy-seed dressing. “But people wanted to learn,” Rosso said. “They started to trust us. We began serving bisteeya, torta rustica — in those days, people hadn’t heard of them. As we discovered new things, like balsamic, we could teach them.” Their menus and newsletter, published to demystify the Silver Palate line of condiments, helped form the basis for the cookbook. The cheerful, chatty voice and the tips, menus and quotations that appear on almost every page were a way to make cooking cozy and fun, Rosso said, as well as to tell readers: “Don’t make a big deal with the food. Get some balloons up in the air and have a picnic!” Now in their early 60s, they are an unlikely pair, Rosso with her highlights and diamonds and Midwestern cheer that sometimes culminates in a “whoop-ee-doo!”; Lukins with her no-nonsense hair and red Bakelite jewelry, a brow arching over her reading glasses as she uses the title “Marat/Sade” to describe a square bathtub. After they sold the Silver Palate in 1988, Rosso returned to her native Michigan to buy and run the Wickwood Inn in Saugatuck with her husband and published two cookbooks; Lukins has written three cookbooks and has been food editor of Parade magazine since 1986, a job she and Rosso took over from Julia Child. The two had a public falling out in 1991, when Lukins objected to something Rosso, who had started a newsletter, wrote about her. Today they have the alternately fond and strained patter of a divorced couple at their child’s wedding.”

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much I did. Food preparation has come a long way over the decades thanks to women like Lukins and Rosso. It has also suffered setbacks. I think home cooking started to change when women began to have careers outside the home and convenience foods came into fashion. And it certainly didn’t help when home economics (defined as cooking and sewing) was eliminated from the curriculum in many school districts. Some thought cooking and sewing skills could and probably should simply be learned at home. (Well they sure as shootin’ didn’t know my mother! She couldn’t sew on a button, and her cooking skills were rudimentary. And that’s putting it nicely!)

So where does that leave us today? Well, since you are reading this post you obviously are interested in this recipe. And must love to cook. And hurray for that.

So to all of you, who like me, are passionate about providing ourselves and our families with healthy, nutritious, and delicious food, keep doing what you’re doing. You are making a difference in your families’ health and well-being. Virtual hugs from Chez Carr. (Oh, and try this recipe. It’s da bomb!)  

• freshly ground black pepper
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in half   

• ¼ c. light brown sugar
• ¼ c. dry white wine
• 1 T. finely chopped fresh Italian parsley

OK, if anyone out there is a WordPress expert and knows how to make a list, without those annoying spaces (like between kosher salt and pepper), could you please show me the way. I need help. Thank you!

Combine the olive oil, vinegar, prunes, olives, capers and juice, bay leaves, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper in a 9×13-inch Pyrex dish or shallow casserole. Add the chicken and stir to coat. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

About 30 minutes before you plan to bake the chicken, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Turn the chicken over and make sure it is in a single layer in your baking pan. Sprinkle the chicken pieces with the brown sugar and pour the white wine around them.  

Bake, basting frequently with the pan juices, until the thigh pieces yield clear yellow (rather than pink) juice when pricked with a fork, 35-40 minutes. The internal temperature should be at least 165 degrees.

With a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to a serving platter. Moisten with a few spoons of the pan juices and sprinkle with the parsley. Pass the remaining pan juices in a sauceboat.

Chicken is great with creamy mashed potatoes and a green salad or veggie.