Roasted chicken with prunes and pine nuts, or pollastre rostit with prunes and pine nuts It’s a classic Catalan Christmas. A major celebratory dish which, perhaps today, due to the availability of chicken, does not attract our attention so much, but we must remember that until four days ago, in historical terms, the Chicken was a fancy dish. Rostit refers to roasted meat and rostir in Catalan originally means to cook meat on a spit (Last), in an oven, etc. subjecting it to high heat and coating or spraying it with grease.
The name of the roast chicken dish has come to refer to a formula that is prepared over the fire, in a casserole, as Jaume Fàbrega -a specialist in gastronomy and author of more than 50 books- says in his article entitled christmas roast: Roasted chicken in Catalonia means cooked in a casserole dish, neither on a spit nor in the oven; many people ignore this wonderful technique and confuse it with stewed chicken. He says that rotary spits and ovens weren’t within the reach of ordinary mortals, but this roast or casserole dish can replicate some of the goodness of spit roasting.
The fat this roast was traditionally prepared with was lard, although it tends to be substituted with olive oil or, frequently, a mixture of the two. The same Fàbrega reports that Christmas roast chicken should include fresh vegetables such as carrots, onion, garlic and a little tomato; aromatic herbs such as thyme, oregano and bay leaf, and always a little cinnamon. I could not find out when or after what it became customary to incorporate prunes and pine nuts. But we celebrate it and we give you our version of this delicious dish.
Difficulty
Small, have the patience to cook the chicken long enough to make it perfectly tender.
Ingredients
For 6 persons
- 1 chicken cut into pieces
- 2 white onions
- 50ml extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 head of garlic
- 2 cloves
- 1/2 cinnamon stick
- 300ml stale wine
- 200g prunes
- 100g pine nuts
- Salt and pepper to taste
preparation
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Season the chicken pieces. To book.
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Peel the onion and cut it into julienne.
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Cover the bottom of a casserole dish with olive oil where all the chicken can fit, heat and sauté the onion over low heat until transparent.
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Add the chopped tomato, sauté everything over high heat until the liquid is reduced and transfer the onion and tomato to a blender. Mix well and set aside.
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Add a little olive oil to the pan and brown the chicken pieces over high heat.
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Without removing the chicken, add the separated but unpeeled garlic cloves, as well as the two cloves.
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Pour in the sated wine and deglaze everything.
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Add to the chicken casserole the tomato and onion puree, as well as the cinnamon stick and the prunes.
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Cover the casserole and cook over very low heat until the chicken is tender; if necessary, add water if the liquid gets too low before the chicken is tender.
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Lightly toast the pine nuts in a pan without fat and add them to the stew in the last 10 minutes of cooking. After this time, rest for five minutes and serve.
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