Mediterranean Chicken
Mom in her kitchen. I’m thinking this must’ve been before one of her students’ piano recitals judging by the fruit on the platter and bottle of Kahlua. (Mom would make an AMAZING Chocolate Fondue with Kahlua for her students.)
Image from my recent dinner party. Vinegar Chicken on a platter that Mom gave me. Dale taught me how to host!
Mom (in 1967) rocking a look I would have worn in the 80s to Cat’s Cradle!
Dad (in 1970) rocking a look I would have worn in the 80s to Cat’s Cradle!
Me in maybe 1987 rocking a look I probably DID wear to Cat’s Cradle!
This isn’t the Camel Walk but here we have video proof of the Reed ladies line dancing to Achy Breaky Heart on the Queen Mary 2. Oh, brother! We’re all there: niece Leah on the left in dark blue, Elisabeth in aqua, my kid Luca in the middle in turquoise, me in a gray print dress, and Mom in silver jacket. This was the one activity we could all agree on! It got really interesting in rough seas.
The extended Reed Family (we’re on the left) at the family farm in Tennessee. Probably the early 1980s. We might have been eating fried chicken but more likely it was sandwiches made by my Grandmother wrapped in wax paper.
Dad and Mom looking cute and happy at Cape May in 1967.
Mom and Dad looking cute and happy. Location and date unknown.
I just had a small dinner party and was looking for a chicken dish to cook. I ended up going with one from the New York Times, I’ve been cooking a lot from their website recently. But, I did come across Mom’s “Mediterranean Chicken” recipe which looks interesting, albeit vague. I’ll share it below. While prepping my dish I realized that – at the whopping age of 49 – it was the first time I was cooking bone-in chicken! How could that be?! I guess I started cooking in the boneless, skinless, low-fat 1990s.
Not reading my recipe all that thoroughly, I unpacked the chicken pieces and immediately began cutting off all of the gross white skin. After I delved a little deeper into the recipe, I realized that it specifically stated that the skin should be left on. Well, crap. Too late. Why would you want skin? I ventured that it was probably to keep in the moisture and that it might be critical to the recipe so, one by one, I did some surgery with the cast-offs and made little chicken skin toupees for each piece. To be honest, It felt a little “Silence of the Lambs”-y. I figured I could always take them off later if it didn’t work. It did the job but looked weird so I ended up ditching the skin suits for the final presentation. (Don’t you want to be invited to dinner at my house?! You actually do! It ended up being delicious despite my efforts to mess it up.) And, speaking of bone-in chicken, to add insult to injury, I actually ended up SWALLOWING a small chicken bone that night. What the hell?! I’m 99% vegetarian and the one time I eat chicken I swallow a bone? My internet search history must look nuts. 1001 versions of “am I going to die?!”. Let me just say that the human body is an amazing thing, the bone dissolved or moved in the night and unless I am somehow now pregnant with a baby chicken this situation seems to have resolved itself. Sheesh.
Now I definitely remember Mom’s chicken recipes all using bone-in chicken. She didn’t mess around. I’m not even sure how prevalent boneless chicken breasts were in the North Carolina grocery stores of the 1970s and 80s? What I DO remember being prevalent is FRIED CHICKEN. Yum, yum. We lived up the street from the original Time-Out Biscuits with their fresh golden fried chicken kept warm under a red heat lamp. My family would stop by occasionally for dinner. Once I joined a high school carpool, Time-Out became a usual stop. And, later, when I started seeing bands at Cat’s Cradle (during the West Franklin St. days) Time-Out was a favorite post-show hangout. One of the bands I used to love to see was Southern Culture on the Skids. Our family has a tie to SCOTS, as they are called, our friend Fetzer Mills used to manage them. And, SCOTS has a tie to fried chicken, they have several songs about the delicacy. The ones I can easily remember are “Fried Chicken and Gasoline” and “8 Piece Box”. Rick Miller, the band’s singer, used to hurl pieces of fried chicken into the audience during the latter. Messy. But, not as messy as an Austin band I heard about who used to throw chili. Gross.
SCOTS is the band whose song “Walk Like a Camel” made Mom pop right up and start Camel Walking! (I talked about this in a previous post.) Who knew she could do that!? And, Cat’s Cradle was where my interest in music really developed. Mom and Dad were SO COOL to let me go there at such a young age. It blows my mind to think that I was going there when I was even younger than my daughter. When I was fifteen Dad walked me up to the door guy and said “this is my kid and I’m cool with her seeing bands”. They let me in. Dad did that a few more times and then they knew who I was . The doorman would put a big X on my hand so I couldn’t drink and you know what? I never even tried to. I was truly there for the music. I went to the Cradle every weekend and saw all of the hot bands on the Athens, GA to Washington, DC circuit: Fugazi, Bad Brains, Love Tractor, Fetchin’ Bones, The Veldt, The Connells, Dillon Fence, The Pressure Boys…. oh, The Pressure Boys, they were my favorite! I remember AGONIZING when The Pressure Boys announced their impending breakup. Their final show was to be at Cat’s Cradle on something like a Wednesday night. I was a sophomore in high school. I told my Mom I just had to be there. And, you know what? She listened. Most of my friends’ parents wouldn’t let them go because it was a school night or because they wouldn’t let them go to the Cradle at all. So, I went by myself. I found a girl I vaguely knew from high school and the two of us were in the front row of one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen: High Energy Southern Ska! Yes, sir. My parents trusted me and they actually were right to do so. I try to remember that as I parent a teen. Speaking of, Wednesday was my daughter’s 17th birthday, something I wish my mother could have seen. Alas, she did not but, to quote one of Mom’s fave musicians, Doug Sahm, “It was fun while it lasted”. My daughter and her Grandmomma sure made the most of their time together!
For today’s recipe I’m going to share Mom’s Mediterranean Chicken as well as the NY Times chicken dish I made, which was excellent. I would have forwarded it to Mom if she were still alive. Leave the skin on unless you like performing plastic surgery on poultry!
MEDITERRANEAN CHICKEN
1 tbsp flour
3 to 3 ½ lb chicken
1 tbsp paprika
1 med onion, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
1-- 2 ½ oz jar mushrooms, drained (Sarah’s note: I’m curious why jarred? This might be an English recipe.)
¼ c good soy sauce
2 tbsp wine vinegar
1/8 tsp oregano.
This recipe comes with no directions! I’m going to assume Mom transcribed it off the TV. She used to watch cooking shows and do that. I’ll bet that you dredge the chicken in flour and then make a sauce with the rest? Maybe smother and bake at 375 for 25 - 30 minutes? This is ALL A GUESS! I’ll try it sometime.
This is the recipe I made:
VINEGAR CHICKEN WITH CRUSHED OLIVE DRESSING
courtesy of the New York Times
3 ½ pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken parts
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
6 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt and black pepper
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 ½ cups green Castelvetrano olives, crushed and pitted
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
1 cup parsley, tender leaves and stems, chopped
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Place chicken on a rimmed baking sheet and toss with turmeric and 2 tablespoons olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Make sure chicken is skin-side up, then pour vinegar over and around chicken and place in the oven.
Bake chicken, without flipping, until cooked through and deeply browned all over, 25 to 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine olives, garlic, parsley, the remaining 4 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl; season with salt and pepper.
Once chicken is cooked, remove baking sheet from the oven and transfer chicken to a large serving platter, leaving behind any of the juices and bits stuck to the pan.
Make sure the baking sheet is on a sturdy surface (the stovetop, a counter), then pour the olive mixture onto the sheet. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, gently scrape up all the bits the chicken left behind, letting the olive mixture mingle with the rendered fat and get increasingly saucy. Pour olive mixture over the chicken, then serve.
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