In an older recipe, I had stayed close to our Mediterranean traditions borrowing ideas from North Africa and the Middle East to propose the Rosemarry, Preserved Lemon, Garlic, and Orange Chicken.
Now I wend a long way east, taking inspiration from a very interesting recipe in Serious Eats.
“There’s a lot going on in the marinade, but one of the standouts—arguably even the key ingredient—is anchovy-based Vietnamese fish sauce, or nuoc mam,” write Emily and Matt Clifton. “Lime, ginger, and fish sauce add bold, bright, deep flavor to chicken,” they point out.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the particular fish sauce they mention, so I used the standard Thai fish sauce (nam pla) available at the Asian food stores in Greece. Limes are, again, an imported fruit that we can only get on Kea in the summer, when bars and the more sophisticated restaurants use it. I only had the local fragrant lemons, which, I must admit, are quite different in flavor; I decided to combine lemon and orange in my recipe.
I didn’t discard the very flavorful Vietnamese-inspired marinade but used it as the sauce to bake both the chicken as well as the accompanying vegetables, potatoes, some of our last garden peppers, and squash, drizzling with olive oil, as I usually do.
I think you will like this deep-flavored, easy chickenand vegetable dish as much as Costas and I did…
Serves 4 (more…)
