Chicken with garlic - pollo al ajillo in Spanish - is a dish every household makes a little differently, which means every household thinks it has the correct recipe. Former Spanish footballer Miguel Torres, partner of actress Paula Echevarría, shares his - classic, without showing off - and the opening read is a good lesson in how „simple" in the kitchen actually demands more discipline than „complicated".

The points Torres defends:

• He buys a whole chicken, not a pack of just thighs. Cuts it at home. Skin comes off for a lighter version. The bones aren't thrown away - they're frozen for a future stock.
• The garlic is sliced, not crushed. That gives different layers of flavour - sliced garlic browns slowly and softens, while crushed falls apart immediately.
• The searing of the chicken is critical. High heat, olive oil, until golden on all sides - not to cook through, but to trigger the Maillard reaction, that artisanal browning that produces a completely different flavour than boiled chicken.

Ingredients for 2-3 portions

• 500 grams of chicken (thighs or drumsticks), cut into pieces, skinless
• 6-8 garlic cloves
• 1 bay leaf
• 100 ml of amontillado white wine (or any dry white)
• 100 ml of chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt, black pepper

Steps

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a deep pan, on medium-high heat. Put in the pieces and sear until they have a golden, firm crust on all sides. Take them out and set aside.

2. Lower the heat. In the same oil add the sliced garlic and the bay leaf. Cook gently - don't fry, don't burn - until the garlic softens and turns light yellow. This is the stage that ruins the dish for many people: if the garlic burns, the whole sauce is finished.

3. Add one tablespoon of flour. Stir well. Cook for 30 seconds to avoid a raw flour taste.

4. Return the chicken to the pan. Turn up the heat. Pour in the wine. Let the alcohol evaporate (this phase takes about 2 minutes - you will smell when the sharp alcohol turns into something gentler).

5. Pour in the chicken stock. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes - until the chicken is tender, and the sauce has reduced and turned creamy.

6. At the end, squeeze lemon over the dish. Taste, adjust salt and pepper.

7. Serve immediately, with quality bread. Without bread this dish makes no sense. The sauce is the whole point, and without something to dip there is no full experience.

The Balkan context: we have this dish, we just call it something else. Chicken with garlic, „chicken stew with lots of garlic", or simply „the same as in the old days". Spaniards sell it as a gastronomic discovery. We know our grandmothers cooked the same thing without a recipe. But Torres' technique is a good reminder - when the searing is genuinely golden, when the garlic hasn't burned, and when the flour is cooked before the liquid goes in - what comes out is not „the same as the old days", but the same as the old days, but done properly.