This is probably a hopeless quest, but...
When I was a kid, my mother worked a German restaurant, and the owner-cook made chicken that we always called "Red Chicken." There was probably a name for it on the menu, but I was a kid, so...it might have just been roast chicken, for all I know.
Anyway, the place burned down, the owner moved away, and my mother was never able to beg, borrow or steal the secret recipe while she worked there. I think she even offered to buy it, but in any case, he wouldn't tell.
The chicken was baked or roasted -- it definitely wasn't fried. It had some sort of coating on it. Not a breading like you'd find on fried chicken, but it wasn't just skin and spices, either. Maybe some kind of thin batter. I don't recall it being crispy or crunchy, either.
The color was a deep mahogany reddish-brown when it was served. I have no idea what color it was before cooking, but it had to be some version of red.
It wasn't overly spicy, but it had good flavor. Thinking back, I can't recall any one predominant flavor.
The owner-cook was from Germany, so I'm hoping that maybe this was some sort of ethnic-regional dish that someone has heard of, rather than something the cook came up with on his own.
Any ideas? I googled first, and I found lots of hits for curried red chicken and adding "German" to it didn't help, because then I got red potato salads.
Donna
