Onions and apricots

Today I cooked sitting down. This is strictly against all chef’s protocol for the kitchen, but under the circumstances I feel my actions were justified- better to cook sitting down than not to cook at all, right? After a full shift of rushing around on a horribly unforgiving concrete conference center floor, my knees, ankles, and feet were all ready for a break. The masochistic side of my mind somehow coerced me into an after-work run, pulling whatever mental stress I had left out with high-tempo music and pumping it through my tired joints, into the pavement around Mirror Lake. My jog conveniently ended at a grocery store, where I wandered the produce section before simply giving up and buying the two items that were on sale- vidalia onions and apricots. Once home, I grudgingly obliged my legs and sat down next to the stove with my economically-purchased produce. I sliced up one and a half onions, and six and a half apricots (well, seven, but one half had to be tested for ripeness) and threw them into a sauteuse. After haphazardly pouring some Simply Naked California chardonnay over top of them, I covered the pan and left it on med-low heat to sweat. As an afterthought, I added a splash of cider vinegar and some chopped garlic. Leaving that to fend for itself, I dug around the freezer until I located a chicken leg. Not the fish I was hoping to find, but good enough. I threw it into the sink to thaw (we don’t have a microwave, so are forced to do things the proper way). After getting distracted by the latest copy of Trail Runner Magazine and almost overflowing the sink, I took my nearly sous-vide cooked chicken out and dry-rubbed it with cardamom and curry (why not, eh?), then put it into a 400-degree oven to see what happened. Sometimes cooking just shouldn’t be taken seriously.

After some scrambling through my randomized spice cabinet, I located cumin, red pepper, and curry (again), and added small pinches of each to the cooking onions and apricots. It tasted pretty good at that point, although the apricots didn’t add as much sweetness as I’d hoped, so I drizzled some honey in to counteract the vinegar. I poured out the rest of chardonnay over the chicken to moisten it while it roasted (no one was going to drink that chardonnay anyway). I resisted adding any more ingredients into the onions... until I found the sesame oil. Just a couple drops, I thought, and then I’ll leave it to become whatever it was meant to be. At this point, the dish was either going to be exactly what I wanted, or it was going to turn out mediocre, another dish to put into the category of “well, it was an interesting experiment”, that would remain unwritten in the recipe books.

I opened a bottle of fruity pear wine, and waited. Maybe I should’ve caramelized the onions before adding the apricots and wine. Did that chicken leg really have enough fat on it to dry rub, or should I have added some butter or something? Is it going to turn out terribly dry? There’s some wild rice in the cabinet that would go great with some shredded chicken and this onion chutney-relish-whatever... But I’m not really that hungry, Just chicken and chutney for me tonight. After deciding the chicken had at least another twenty minutes in the oven, I turned off the stovetop and went to take a shower, returning with much higher confidence that this meal was going to be just what I wanted. The chicken was roasting nicely in it’s own juices, the chutney needed just a little more reduction, and it would all come together into deliciousness. I was sure of it.

I shredded the chicken off the bone, carefully saving the perfectly crispy skin, then spooned a hefty amount of my on-sale produce chutney on top. It was perfectly delicious. The chicken turned out tender and spicy, the chutney adding the perfect sweet-and-sour balance to it, with the chicken skin smoothing out the acid with fat, and adding the perfect little crunch. Despite the fact that this dish didn’t originate in inspiration or cookbook, I had taken what was given to me (at a discount!) and made it work.