Recipe: Abuela Clara Maria's Chicken Escabeche

In memory of the grand dame of Spanish gastronomy whom I had the pleasure of cooking with.

Kalimera to all,

This week’s email was inspired by the sad news that one grandmother I have cooked with passed away a few days ago. I really wanted to share my experience with this particular lady (as well as a special family recipe she shared with me) because she is one of the people I credit for pushing this project to become so much more than a collection of recipes.

A couple of years ago now, Clara Maria Gonzales de Amezua, the grand dame of Spanish gastronomy and lady credited for the evolution of modern Spanish Cuisine (a good friend of the 1950s ‘food set’ Julia Childs and Elizabeth David) hosted me in her beautiful home in Puerta de Hierro, Madrid, taking me in for a weekend of cooking in which I’d learn much more than how to rustle up a decent escabeche.

If you read anything today, please read Clara Maria’s words, in Italics below. She was a special woman who had an innate ability to manifest good things and inspire belief and drive in others. Without these words, I might not be writing this to you today, working on a third book, living in Greece and enjoying the life I dreamed of in my twenties.

On occasion, I’ve been lucky enough to have been offered the chance to stay with a grandmother I’m cooking with overnight. Such was the case with Clara Maria, who kindly offered to host me for a weekend at her beautiful home on the outskirts of Madrid. The house itself was designed by renowned architect Luiz Gutierrez Soto and Clara’s late husband. I remember it being wood panelled and earthy with the wood shipped from Canada and an impressive kitchen of industrial appliances sourced from the USA.

Upon arrival, I was sat out in the garden to wait for Clara Maria, with an aperitif of Spanish beers and enormous green olives. Soon enough she emerged from the house, a lady of such grace and class that I barely noticed the cane she needed to support her weight as she moved towards me in greeting. She sat herself down ever so slowly and cracked open a beer. From this moment, I knew we’d all get along. 

At the time, so many doors were being slammed in my face when I approached publishers and literary agents with my idea to write a book of grandmothers’ recipes and stories. It was meeting Clara Maria that encouraged me not to give up on the project, to believe in what I was doing and to have the courage to take a leap of faith and quit my job at a newspaper in London and go freelance in order to focus on my book.

I spent a weekend tirelessly listening to Clara Maria, not just in her gorgeous kitchen but hours lounging in the plush library, lined with hundreds of cooking volumes, hearing her opinions on life and what it could do for me, if I gave it a chance.

She did give me the option to head out and explore Madrid but I chose instead to spend most of my time there curled up on her couch near a roaring fire, absorbing stories of her times as part of the culinary set of the 1950s with Elizabeth David and Julia Childs. Soaking up her views on life. Letting her positivity, her belief in just the ability to believe, sink into my very own philosophy. All between exquisite dishes that exemplified the elegance and finesse that Clara Maria herself embodies. 

CLARA MARIA

Born, Madrid, 1930,

Grandchildren, Alvaro, Jacobo, Enrique, Felipe, Camila, Primi, Luis, Lorenzo, Guillermo, Eugenia, Jimena, Antonio, Clara, Sofia, Lino, Martta, Isabel

They call her, Yaya

Escabeche is something you can keep for months and you can escabeche anything, from partridge and game to chicken, it’s a popular classic with all the Spaniards. The verb ‘escabechar’ in Spanish simply means to cook and preserve in vinegar, which I like to do a lot, but using only very good quality Spanish vinegar.

Cooking with vinegar is actually one of the first lessons I taught at the Culinary Institute in New York. I had taken six Spanish chefs with me to teach a lesson on Spanish cuisine. They were very young and had never been to New York before, so I wasn’t convinced they would make the early start. I said, “Tomorrow at 7am, you are here or I will come and throw a cold jar of water over your heads as you sleep.” They said, “Of course, we will be there,” and of course, they never arrived.

Everyone at the institute was very angry so I took the class myself to entertain them. I taught them how to do a vinaigrette with Spanish sweet sherry and sweet vinegar. You must mix half a bottle of a very good vinegar, with a bottle of sweet sherry and you leave it to boil until it reduces, then let it cool, and you bottle it again for a delicious vinaigrette. They made that vinegar with a vintage that had 160 years in a bodega and a very valuable sherry. It was 100 times better than the modern vinegar in America. Cheaper as well as better, would you believe.

When I got back to Spain, the bodegas behind the sherry and vinegar I had recommended were waiting for me with tonnes of flowers. They said that for the first time in thirty years, they had sold all their stock in New York. It was because I’d taken the class for people who owned restaurants and hotels. I was so amused because I only took the class because the Spanish chefs with me had all disappeared.

Eventually I founded Alambique, a culinary school and shop in Madrid after being inspired by what I had seen of the culinary scene in New York. I was a very good friend of Elizabeth David in London, so I asked her advice when I was thinking about doing it and she was very enthusiastic about it. Then in the States I became a very good friend of Julia Childs’. We were all in the same group of ‘foodies’, as you say now. 

All my friends back home were telling me, “You’re crazy – what are you doing? We have cooks in our houses, why do we need to learn to cook?”

The first month, only four people came into our shop but I didn’t mind very much. As women, we should really trust our instincts. You live with your mind and your heart and you must cook something up that is good with them. My friends were terrified but I wasn’t worried at all because I believed in what I was doing.

I think one of the best secrets of life is to just be a good person. You receive so much just by being good. You will be very happy. It’s so important to have faith in whatever you go into. You must believe in what you do, very much. You have to believe it is going to happen.

I made a success of Alambique because I truly believed in it. It’s a question of character. Sometimes, you do something and you think, “Oh I am crazy! This is ridiculous, I’m going to lose everything.” But if you are sure of what you’re doing, it’s magic. It opens all the doors.

All you must do is believe.

Abuela Clara Maria’s Spanish Escabeche (Chicken marinated in sherry vinegar)

Feeds 4
Takes 50 minutes, plus chilling overnight