Pollo alla Ligure

Liguria is a sliver of coastline pinched between mountains and sea, and its cooking reflects this geography. There is no room for excess. The olives are small because the trees cling to terraced hillsides. The herbs are wild because they grow in rocky soil. The cooking is restrained because that is what the land teaches.

Pollo alla Ligure is not a complicated dish. Chicken, olives, pine nuts, wine, a touch of tomato, the herbs that grow on the hills above Genoa. What makes it Ligurian is what it lacks: no heavy cream, no aggressive garlic, no drowning sauce. The chicken tastes like chicken. The olives taste like olives. Each ingredient remains itself.

Taggiasca olives are essential. These small, purplish-black olives from the town of Taggia have a sweetness and delicacy that larger olives cannot match. They are the same olives pressed into the pale, fruity oil that defines Ligurian cooking. If you cannot find them, use another small, mild black olive, but do not substitute those rubbery canned things. You would be making a different dish entirely.