First, a note before you start this recipe: It is designed to serve three people (two thighs/breasts each). Preparing the marinade takes 10-15 minutes (25 if you suck with digital cameras like me). Then the chicken should marinate for at least four hours. The actual cooking only takes 35-40 minutes. So, if you want to make this dish plan ahead. Also, I got this recipe from my uncle who is a highly respected naturopathic doctor so you can be sure that this is a healthy meal. It is also pretty cheap for feeding three people, all the ingredients (not including the vinegar, olive oil and brown sugar which I already have) totalled slightly over $20 at my local (overpriced) grocery. I probably could have saved $3-4 by going to Safeway but given the choice I prefer to support the local guys.

First things first, lets assemble our ingredients:
1 large ziploc (or other tough resealable) plastic bag
6 boneless thighs (or breasts if you prefer, thighs are much moister which I prefer)
16-18 Pimentoed green olives
8 Dried figs
4 cloves of garlic
Fresh cilantro
Dried basil (I couldn't find any so I ended up using oregano instead, I think I might actually like it better with oregano than basil).
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Brown sugar
Salt
Pepper (preferably fresh ground)
3/4 cup of chicken broth

For you culinary implement connoisseurs (snobs?) yes, those are Peugeot salt and pepper grinders. $60 at a Seattle kitchen store for my mom for Christmas. They weren't the Finnish ones I wanted to get but hey, they were 2/3 the price.

Now we start the preparation.
First, slice and dice the olives into nice little chunks like so:

Dump 'em into the bag.

Next slice the dried figs in half:

Add to the bag.

Now, grab a good bit of cilantro and chop it up. You'll need two tablespoons of the minced cilantro and it loses a lot of volume once you start chopping. The amount in the picture is about 1 1/4 tablespoons.

Add the 2 tbsp of cilantro to the bag.

Next it's time for the garlic. Grab four cloves (NOT heads), proceed to take the skin off like so:

And for the love of god, don't hit the knife too hard, it only takes one firm strike with the heel of your hand, you don't have to drive the knife through the cutting board and into the counter. Also, if you hold the knife so that it is not parallel to your cutting surface the garlic will have a tendency to shoot out from under and ricochet off random stuff in your kitchen.

After you have your 4 cloves with no skin left, proceed to mince them like so:

Slide the garlic into the bag with the growing marinade.

Now add 2 teaspoons of the dried basil (or oregano in my case). This ingredient is pretty hard to screw up, and any standard Italian/Mediterranean herb mix will do just fine.


Next we sweeten it up a little bit with 3 tablespoons of brown sugar:


Time for the liquids - 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar; if your vinegar is especially strong go with 1 1/2 tablespoons as it's easy to overpower this dish with too much vinegar.


And then 2 teaspoons of olive oil:


Next add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper. I'm not going to waste imageshack space showing you how to do this step because if you can't, well you should go shoot yourself or something.


Now that we have all the ingredients for the marinade in the ziploc bag, close it up and shake it around to mix up the contents. Then reopen it and add the chicken thighs (make sure to trim any excess fat beforehand). Close it back up, but make sure to keep a bit of air in there (i.e. don't close it like you're going to be sticking this in the freezer and don't want the chicken to get freezerburn). Shake the bag around once more to distribute the marinade over the chicken.


Now, try and find a spot in your hopefully crowded fridge for the marinade to sit. It took me almost 10 minutes of rearranging stuff to get a nice flat spot.


So, now we let the marinade sit for 4 to 4 1/2 hours in the fridge. Make sure to check in once every 45 minutes to hour and shake around the bag some more, flip it over, redistribute the contents, etc.


Okay, so the four hours is up. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit (177 celsius for you non-yanks). Pull the chicken out of the fridge, open the bag and dump the entire contents into a pyrex or other baking dish. Now add the 3/4 cup of chicken broth that you've been wondering to do with for four hours. Put this in your preheated oven and let it cook for 30-40 minutes. For reference, I forgot to preheat my oven and just cooked it at 375 instead and the thinner pieces were slightly overcooked at 36 minutes when I pulled it out of the oven.



After you take the chicken out of the oven strain off all the excess chicken broth/fat/etc. leaving only the chicken and marinade ingredients. I've found the best method for this to be a slotted spoon.

The finished product:

Add on whatever sides you feel like. Tonight I opted for last night's leftover pesto linguine and some sauteed vegetables. Usually I serve this dish with rice pilaf or coos coos for the full Mediterranean/Middle East dish but I got lazy tonight.

Also, this dish is best accompanied by a decent red wine:



I hope you enjoyed looking through this recipe, and if you try it I'm sure you'll find it tasty. Any comments/questions/suggestions for improvement/etc. are welcome and appreciated.

I'm trying to decide on another recipe or three to post in a couple weeks or so. Right now I'm thinking of doing a Spanish-style marinated chicken (I call it Edgar Allan Poe chicken because part of the marinade is Amontillado), a standard or special french meatloaf (I saw a food thread for meatloaf a few days back so probably not) or a really good chili.
If you have any suggestions/requests feel free to PM, IM or email me. A few more recipes in my repertoire are peanut sauce chicken, challa (Jewish bread), seared ahi dinner salad, various eggplant dishes (mostly sides), and I'm drawing a blank for any others right now, but I'll probably update later.

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students.washington.edu/mkawaky/