MEET THE DILs
Jessica Coulter
Jessica lives in New York City with her Husband and Dog. When she isn't writing for this here blog, she's a copywriter at an ad agency in Manhattan.
3000 MILES AWAY...
Marites Cristobal Coulter
Marites lives in Los Angeles with her husband. When she's not dabbling as a self-proclaimed domestic wannabe, she's working in PR.
- BEVERAGES
- BREADS
- BREAKFAST/BRUNCH
- DESSERTS
- FRUIT
MEET THE MIL
Pat Tippett
MIL is a chef and food stylist in Portland, OR. For many years she owned Flaming Carrot Catering, pdx's favorite eco-conscience catering company. She takes her passion for art, travel and cuisine back to the kitchen and studio and delicious things happen.
She's currently focusing her talents on food styling and on-site chef services for film scenes and group gatherings (hey tweens - she did the food styling on the twilight movie!). Oh, and writes MIL Missions for this little blog.
Cooking with us? Let us feature a photo of you and your hard work. Email it to 3000milestildinner@gmail.com
3000 miles 'til dinner. |
♥WHEN YOUR MIL (mother-in-law) IS A CHEF, YOU EITHER GET NERVOUS OR GET COOKING.♥
----------------------------------------------- Two busy DILs living on two different coasts getting long-distance cooking lessons from their MIL. |
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recipe
Chicken Marbella. (jessica’s attempt)
Original MIL Mission #47: Chicken Marbella
I walked into this mission with some…apprehension. Let’s just say that my husband is not a “fan of chicken marbella” on facebook.
Apparently MIL served it to her three boys a lot throughout his childhood and he notoriously kind of hates it. I offered to skip this one and wait until I was cooking for a friend or something, but he said he’d give it one more try. How very mature of him, I say.
Ingredients.
♥HOW I MADE IT.♥
I’ve had a bottle of dry rose staring at me all winter (inspired by our summer trip to Cannes), so I decided to use it in this dish. Plus it matches with the red wine vinegar.
For some reason I have a mental block on what dried fruits began as what. (read: Jessica’s not that smart). When I saw the word “prunes”, I registered it at dates. Yeah. Not the same thing. BUT, I decided to wing it because I had some dates left over from a previous bacon-wrapped date experiment.
I also had some dried apricots already in the fridge. I put my dried fruit, olives and the rest of my marinade ingredients into a bowl.
And added my chicken pieces. While grocery shopping, I ended up purchasing a package of thighs and drumsticks. Who knew such a medley of chicken parts existed?! I love drumsticks because they’re very utilitarian and they remind me of the cartoons. (toon kings adore drumsticks)
I marinated the chicken overnight with the intention to bake the next morning. Unfortunately, per usual, I was running late and didn’t get to putting it in the oven until that night. It was at this point in the process that I read further to the “marinate for no longer than 12 hours” part. OOPS.
But I grabbed a drumstick and marched on.
I baked the chicken for the full 60 minutes as I think I heard MIL tell me once that drums and thighs are pretty hard to overcook.
♥MIL MISSION #47: ACCOMPLISHED.♥
So lovely!
I served my Marbella with some simple angel hair pasta tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, (a secret squirrel pat of butter!) and parmesan. A pairing I’ve enjoyed courtesy of MIL many times. Oh, and let’s just say that the bottle of rose is no longer staring at me from across the kitchen.
♥PLATE IT, ATE IT, GRADED IT.♥
scale: 0 (not at all) to 5 (very)
Cupboard to table time: 1 hr. 20 min. (and overnight+ for marination station!)
Difficulty: 3
Deliciousness: 4 (it was just a tad sweet for my taste. Next time I’ll choose a more subtle wine and cuisinart the fruit and olives together so the savory, saltiness can have more presence in every bite.)
Impressed Husband factor: 3.5 (You know, for the amount of inner-child disdain he had coming into this dish, he cleared his plate.)
Leftover-friendly: 4 (I ate some cold as a snack at it was extra good.)
(posted by jessica)
