I don’t often order chicken when I’m out in a restaurant, unless maybe it’s a perfectly cooked fried chicken or something extra special. It’s just not my favorite and I’d rather spend money on  dishes like veal milanese, homemade ravioli, or countless other delicious dishes. However, there is an exception and that is the chicken pimentos at the Barcelona restaurants in Connecticut. We’ve been eating this dish for years and it never disappoints.

A few years back we had an opportunity to go to their cooking class and learn how to make the dish start to finish, including butchering the chicken. It was a ton of fun and we now make this dish on special occasions as it is a little bit time consuming, but we made it Mother’s Day 2019 and it was even more delicious than I remembered. I can’t promise this recipe is 100% replica of Barcelona’s but it’s how we’ve been making it, and it’s pretty darn great!

Ingredients:

• 6 french cut chicken breasts, bone in and skin on (have the butcher do it- it’s easier that way!)
• 10 or so hot cherry peppers cut up and seeds removed
• 3 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 3/4 cups white wine (chablis or we use pinot grigio – something you would drink)
• Kosher Salt
• Vegetable oil & Olive oil
• 4 TBSP butter
• Fresh chopped parsley for garnish

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

Salt your chicken. More salt than you would think and on both sides.

Get your oven safe pans very hot! When ready, add in about 10% olive oil to 90% vegetable oil–enough oil to just coat the bottom of the pan. Then add your chicken skin side down in the pan and try not to move it. Also be careful not to over crowd the pan as you want some serious searing going on – not steaming. We used two pans. Let it go for about 5/6 minutes.

When your chicken has a nice brown color on the skins, transfer your pan into the oven and let the chicken cook 25-30 minutes or until done (with the skin side still down).

In the meantime while your chicken is in the oven, put a cold pan on the stove. Add in olive oil and garlic. Then turn on the heat and let the garlic brown. You should watch this step closely as there are milliseconds between beautiful browning and burnt disaster.

When the garlic is nice and brown add the white wine. Let the liquid come up to a simmer.

Add in the lemon juice and chicken stock. You do not need to season the sauce. Trust me you just don’t and it comes out perfectly.

Let the sauce simmer and reduce by half.

You can add in the hot cherry peppers at any time, but I like to wait until the sauce already begins reducing. The longer they are in there, the hotter the sauce will be.

When ready add in the hot peppers.

Remove your chicken from the oven and place your chicken on a tray, skin side up so it doesn’t get soggy.

Pour the sauce you just made into one of the chicken dishes, scraping up the brown bits with a wooden spoon.

To finish the sauce, add in the butter on very low heat and stir in to combine.

At this point you can return the chicken to the sauce pan skin side up and let it finish in the sauce. We completely forgot this step but that’s okay!

When you are ready for plating, pour the sauce in your dish and place the chicken on top. You don’t want to pour the sauce over the chicken or it will take away from that nice crispy skin you developed. Sprinkle with parsley and serve!

Barcelona usually serves some sliced potatoes on the plate but we had stuffed artichokes on the side instead. And of course some delish sliced bread to soak up that delicious sauce.  You can also find my stuffed artichoke recipe here.