Chicken Marbella

After Amelia was born a dear friend of mine brought my family a very yummy dinner...Chicken Marbella. Last night I decided to make it myself! I love it because you marinate the chicken ahead and then just pop it in the oven. Makes for an easy weeknight meal.

The full recipe can be found below, but here's a quick summary.

First, I gathered all of the ingredients for the marinade. The recipe calls for 1/2 head of garlic, finely pureed. Well, I went the quick route and used crushed garlic from Trader Joes.

Here's the marinade all ready to go. I probably added more then what was called for for the olives and prunes. Love them both, so why not!

Pretty much whenever I cook with chicken breasts I pound them to be thinner. Personally I just think they are better that way!

All set to pop in the fridge! The recipe says to marinate it the night before, but I didn't get my act together last night. So I whipped it up this morning and I don't think the taste suffered any.

And then later that evening all I had to do was transfer it to a baking dish and add the last couple of ingredients.

Into the oven for about 50 minutes and voila!

I had been planning on serving it with egg noodles, but checked the pantry and ooops! I'm out. So I went with fusilli instead. By the way, I bet that wouldn't happen if I had that organized pantry I'm drooling over. But anyway....fusilli pasta was just fine. Added a simple salad and dinner was served!

Here's the full recipe. Try it out and let me know what you think!

CHICKEN MARBELLA:

4-6 chicken breasts

1/2 head of garlic, peeled and finely pureed

2 T dried oregano

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/4 c red wine vinegar

1/4 c olive oil

1/2 c pitted prunes

1/4 c pitted Spanish green olives

1/4 c capers with a bit of juice

3 bay leaves

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 c white wine

2 T fresh cilantro

In a large bowl combine garlic, oregano, salt and pepper to taste, vinegar, olive oil, prunes, olives, capers with caper juice and bay leaves. Add the chicken breasts and coat completely with marinade. Cover and let marinate, refrigerated, overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Arrange chicken in single layer in shallow baking pan and spoon marinade over evenly. Sprinkle chicken breasts with brown sugar and pour white wine around them.

Bake 50 minutes to 1 hour.

With slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives and capers to a serving platter. Add some of the pan juices and sprinkle generously with cilantro.