Chicken with dried apricots is hardly a new idea, but it’s almost always too sweet, and the routine addition of cinnamon and cloves makes the whole thing taste more like dessert than dinner. Take them away, add a little vinegar to counter the fruit’s sweetness, improve and simplify the cooking technique, and you have a beautiful dish for a winter meal.

　　

Ingredients

makes 4 servings

　　1 cup dried apricots or other fruit

　　1/4 cup red wine vinegar

　　1/2 cup red wine

　　1 chicken, cut into serving pieces

　　Salt and freshly ground black pepper

　　1 medium onion, chopped

　　

Step 1

Put the apricots in a small bowl (or a 2-cup measure) and add the vinegar, wine, and about 1/4 cup water to cover. Let soak while you brown the chicken.

　　

Step 2

Turn the heat to medium-high under a 12-inch nonstick skillet and add the chicken, skin side down. Cook, rotating the pieces (not turning them) so they brown evenly. When they are nicely browned—take your time—turn them so they are skin side up and season with salt and pepper. Make a little space in which you can add the onion and cook, stirring the onion occasionally, until it has softened a bit, a minute or two.

　　

Step 3

Add the apricots and their liquid and bring to a boil; cook for a minute, then turn the heat to low and cover. Cook until the chicken is done, 15 to 20 minutes; do not turn while it is cooking. Remove the lid, raise the heat, and season the chicken well with salt and pepper. Boil out any excess liquid; you do not want the sauce to be too watery. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary and serve.

　　

Variations

Step 4

A few fresh thyme sprigs, added at the beginning of step 2 and discarded before you serve the chicken, add another dimension to this dish.

　　

Step 5

A tablespoon or two of butter, stirred in at the end, will make the sauce considerably richer. Or you might render some bacon, remove it, and brown the chicken in the bacon fat; crumble the bacon and stir it in at the end of cooking.

　　From Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes From the New York Times by Mark Bittman Copyright (c) 2007 by Mark Bittman Published by Broadway Books.Mark Bittman is the author of the blockbuster Best Recipes in the World (Broadway, 2005) and the classic bestseller How to Cook Everything, which has sold more than one million copies. He is also the coauthor, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, of Simple to Spectacular and Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef. Mr. Bittman is a prolific writer, makes frequent appearances on radio and television, and is the host of The Best Recipes in the World, a 13-part series on public television. He lives in New York and Connecticut.