Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Apricot Chicken

A pretty tasty weeknight dinner, with only a small amount of swearing.

The Recipe: Seared Chicken with Apricot Sauce
From Eating Well.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

We didn't have canola oil, so used olive oil instead. This was probably not good, as I think (correct me) that canola oil has a higher smoke point. And maybe my flame was too high. Anyhoo, by the time I'd done the second batch of chicken, there was some significant smokiness in our kitchen, and lots of black stuff in the pan. That really didn't look very tasty. So I switched to a different pan before the last lot of chicken was totally done, and managed to get a little bit of fond out of it. Not a total disaster.

Also, I dialed back the preserves a bit, thinking it might be too sweet. But those apricots were surprisingly tart! So would recommend sticking with what the recipe suggests.

Pix

There's fond... and there's soot...















Half-way through Step 3 (in fresh pan):















Sauce done:















On plate (terrible pic, sorry!):





2 comments:

Dana said...

It's nice to see recipes for savory apricot dishes, and not just desserts. This looks really intriguing. I want to say delicious, but I'm always kind of wary of savory/sweet things together. It's one of my failings, I know it.

And I think canola oil does have a higher smoke point, though I've managed to burn that AND olive oil in my less proud moments. It's nice to hear that someone else does it, too!

Yesica N. Cook said...

Hi Dana! Thanks for commenting! Actually, from discussions with family, I think my problem was simply having the flame too high. Also I didn't pound the chicken cos that gives me the heeby-jeebies, so it took longer to cook. Oh well, live and learn! :)