A small calamity happened at my house yesterday. I was replacing one of my cookbooks on the shelf, and all of a sudden there was this shelf shift, a tilt, and nearly every cookbook on that 3-foot wide shelf tumbled to the floor. The good news: not one cookbook landed on my sandal-clad toes. The bad news: the shelf is compromised. My DH said (later) that I simply have too many books on the shelves. Sigh. We’re going to try to fix it, but I don’t know exactly what we’ll do. It’s a custom-made bookcase. I’ll need to contact our friend, Darci the Decorator, and see what she can do. But what I ended up doing was stacking the contents of that shelf in myriad places in my kitchen until we figure out what to do about this dilemma. Post-script here: Darci the Decorator called the builder of the shelf, he’s stopping by today to permanently affix the shelves so we’ll not have the problem. Whew.
I knew I wanted to make chicken for dinner. And I had some fresh picked zucchini from our corner farm stand. I have numerous cookbooks on my shelves that I’ve looked at, but never cooked from. I wanted to remedy that! From the fallen cookbook stacks, I chose Diana Kennedy’s The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. This was a Christmas gift to me a couple of years ago (it was on my Amazon wish list), and although I’d glanced through the book more than once, I’d not ever cooked anything. Diana Kennedy is well regarded as one of the authorities of Mexican cookery. She’s written numerous books, and this one is a compilation of some of the favorites from her earlier books, all updated for ingredients and techniques plus lots of new recipes. She’s been called the Julia Child of Mexican cooking, and her book is amazing, really. Ingredients are well defined, history explained, and cultural differences explored. This recipe rendition came from Aquascalientes, from a chef/caterer, Señora Anamaría de Andrea.
The elements of this dish are remarkably ordinary – chicken, celery, onions, garlic, tomatoes, white wine and grapes. Who would think that combination could be so tasty? There’s nothing in this that would normally be associated with Mexican (like fresh, hot chiles, chile powder, tomatillos, beans, cilantro). My DH deemed it fabulous. I sautéed some zucchini too (sprinkled with some mild chile powder), and rounded out the plate with one hot flour tortilla apiece. The recipe starts with a whole chicken – I bought pieces instead – and decided after preparing this that once the chicken was cooked and cooled, I’d remove the chicken meat from the bones and just reheat in the sauce. That way you could make it ahead, and you could serve it over a mound of rice if you wanted to, or pile a few pieces, sauce and a few grapes into a flour tortilla. Don’t skimp on the sauce in any way – it’s the sauce that makes the dish – once the chicken is cooked through, you whiz up the vegetables in the blender, then you continue to cook it with the wine and lastly, the grapes.
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Mexican Chicken with Grapes (Pollo a la Uva)
Recipe By: slightly adapted from Diana Kennedy’s book, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico
Servings: 8
COOK’S NOTES: My suggestion is that once the chicken is cooked through (you could do this earlier in the day), allow it to cool enough so you can handle it. Remove all the chicken from the bones and continue with the sauce as indicated. When you’re ready to serve, reheat the sauce and add the chicken to the sauce until everything is heated through. You could either scoop pieces into tortillas and eat that way, or serve on a plate with a carb side dish. The original recipe calls for cooking a whole chicken, then cutting into pieces after the baking. My dish was cooked completely on the stovetop, which worked just fine. I used additional garlic just because.
3 pounds chicken pieces — breasts and thighs, or your choice
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup onions — thinly sliced
2 whole garlic cloves — chopped
2 stalks celery — chopped
2 pounds tomatoes — fresh or canned, chopped, about 4 1/4 cups
1/4 teaspoon thyme — or 6 sprigs fresh
1/4 teaspoon marjoram — or 6 sprigs fresh
2/3 cup dry white wine
1 pound grapes — seedless
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Heat a medium-sized Dutch oven over medium high heat.
2. Add oil and butter to pan. Brown chicken pieces in fat until golden brown on both sides. Season with salt and pepper; remove and set the chicken aside.
3. In the same pan, fry the onion, celery and garlic over low heat for about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and herbs to the pan. Place the chicken pieces on their sides (standing up as much as possible) and place in oven for 20 minutes.
4. Remove lid and turn chicken pieces over and replace lid. Continue baking for another 20-25 minutes. Turn off oven. Transfer chicken pieces to a warmed serving dish and place the dish in the oven.
5. Pour the vegetable mixture into a blender and blend (be careful it doesn’t blow off the lid – hold top with a towel) until smooth. Return this sauce to the pan and cook over medium heat until it has reduced and thickened (sauce will spit some – be careful), about 10 minutes. Add the wine and continue simmering for about 3 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the grapes and continue to cook for about 2-3 minutes until grapes are heated through. Pour the sauce and grapes over and around the chicken and serve immediately.
Per Serving: 386 Calories; 24g Fat (57.7% calories from fat); 23g Protein; 17g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 113mg Cholesterol; 132mg Sodium.
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