Some food and drinks are decidedly retro. An ambrosia Jell-O mold salad screams the ‘70s. A TV dinner or home-cooked dinner of Salisbury steak is straight from the ‘60s. The white Russian cocktail is pure ‘80s, as is the spinach dip in a bread bowl that I still serve every year at my family’s Christmas tree-trimming party.
One dish that was super popular in the 1980s but doesn’t deserve to be relegated to the land of retro dishes is chicken Marbella (pronounced mar-BAY-yah), a beloved dinner dish that became super popular with home cooks because of its inclusion in the “Silver Palate Cookbook,” published in 1982.
The cookbook authors, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, had a small prepared foods shop in New York City in the late 1970s. Chicken Marbella was one of their dishes that always sold very well, particularly during Jewish holidays. Although the name and some of the ingredients of the dish may make it seem Mediterranean, its origins are firmly in New York City’s Upper West Side.
Chef Andrew Zimmern even mentioned the dish’s origins in an Instagram video a few years ago.
What Is Chicken Marbella?
This classic chicken dish may be associated with 1980s nostalgia, but there’s nothing in the ingredients or its preparation that would make it out of place on the modern dinner table. The recipe starts with a whole cut-up chicken. The chicken pieces sit on top of a mixture of prunes, olives, capers, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, oregano, bay leaves, salt, and pepper overnight in the fridge, marinating in all the flavorful goodness.
When it’s time to go into the oven, just sprinkle the chicken pieces with brown sugar and christen them with some dry white wine—try Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, or unoaked Chardonnay. An hour later, pull the moist, flavorful chicken with a to-die-for sauce out of the oven. Serve it with crusty bread to soak up the sauce or pull the chicken off the bones and serve it and the sauce over rice for a satisfying weeknight meal, but don’t think this dish should be relegated to weeknights. It can be the perfect chicken dish for a dinner party.
Why Chicken Marbella Is the Perfect Dinner-Party Dish
Ina Garten has plenty of tips for entertaining, but her number one tip for making it easy on herself is to make sure she’s not cooking everything at once.
“I always pick something I can make in advance, something you can put in the oven and forget about it, something that goes on top of the stove, and something that’s served at room temperature, so four things don’t have to be hot at the same time,” she says.
Chicken Marbella satisfies two of those requirements. You make it almost totally in advance, and then it cooks in the oven. Many side dishes that work well with it are made on the stovetop, like mashed potatoes, lemon couscous, or steamed vegetables. Bread can be your room-temperature dish since it’s imperative to sop up all the juices.
On top of it being what we’re sure would be an Ina-approved dinner party dish (she has a version of it on her Barefoot Contessa website), the recipe—which serves six—is easy to double if you’ll have more guests around your dinner table.
As the weather gets chilly, chicken Marbella deserves to come out of the retro recipe box and become a go-to dish for both weeknight dinners and dinner parties alike.
