It’s the recipe that gets guys to pop the question.
Fifteen years ago, when a panicked Glamour magazine assistant couldn’t figure out what to cook for her boyfriend,
then-fashion editor Kim Bonnell jumped to her rescue.
Bonnell knew the recipe — a simple roast chicken marinated in lemon juice — was delicious, but had no idea it would lead the assistant’s boyfriend to drop to his knee.
“Jokingly around the office, it became known as Engagement Chicken,” says Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor-in-chief, “and she gave the recipe to three other women around the office who made it for their boyfriends and they all got engaged.”
With such a high success rate, Glamour decided to share Engagement Chicken with its readers in 2004. Since then, they’ve been bombarded with stories — more than 70 by Leive’s count — about the chicken’s marital magic.
Now, the magazine has rounded up a collection of dishes meant to help women navigate their kitchen — and their everyday lives — in a new cookbook, “100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know” (Hyperion).
In addition to Engagement Chicken, the book covers breakfast (“He Stayed Over Omelette”), entrees (“Let’s Make a Baby Pasta”) and drinks (“Forget the Mistake You Made at Work Margarita”), all tried-and-true recipes perfected by Leive and her editors.
“Each one of these recipes satisfies a certain need that comes up in a woman’s life,” Leive says. “They’re simple and easy and they’re not going to take you forever, but they’re delicious. They work even for women who are not hugely experienced cooks or who live in tiny apartments.”
Leive, who first learned to cook in an East Village apartment, says first-time cooks shouldn’t be intimidated by a small kitchen.
“You need to stock your fridge wisely and your pantry the same way,” she advises. “If you have limited space, it’s good to know that you don’t need to buy absolutely everything, for instance.”
Her single most important investment is a 12-inch cast-iron pan, a multitasking kitchen tool that works on stovetops and in the oven.
And don’t feel the need to start with complicated recipes, Leive says.
“A simple, delicious roast fish or roast vegetables or nicely grilled piece of meat can feel absolutely luxurious even if you’ve only taken four ingredients to prepare it.”
Leive believes that simplicity and good preparation are the keys to Engagement Chicken’s overwhelming
success.
“Don’t cut corners,” she says. “You need to pat the entire chicken dry with paper towels. Otherwise, the lemon that you squeeze onto the chicken won’t fully make its way into the skin. You won’t get the crispness that you want.”
Once the chicken is done, don’t fret over the carving. Leive recommends using kitchen shears, even if that’s not the most traditional technique.
“No guy you’re cooking for worth his salt is going to think it any less delicious if it’s a little bit messy when you carve it.”
Her last piece of guaranteed diamond ring success?
“There’s going to be some juice in the pan after you cook it. You want to drizzle the juice on top of the chicken. It’s absolutely delicious. As we say in the book, that’s the marry-me juice.”
