#Recipe 2: Apricot Chicken with White Pepper, Vin Jaune, and Dill
A version of my grandmother's take on a retro dish
Apricot chicken is a retro dish from the 1970s that made its way into Ashkenazi-Jewish kitchens on both sides of the atlantic. It’s also plausible that some form of the dish existed in the Jewish households of Eastern Europe through the second half of the last millennium, with chicken the most commonly consumed meat, often as Jews were poultry farmers, and apricots, apples and pears eaten fresh or preserved. Apricot season is May-September, but the invention of the tin means this dish is available all year round.
It has previously appeared on The Schmaltz in my introductory post, where I mentioned my love for my Grandma Angie’s version. The original dish calls for an apricot jam to create something sticky, and potentially too cloying. This is not that, as my grandma knows better, switching them out for tinned apricots to create a much more balanced dish.
This base of the recipe is hers, but I’ve made a few adjustments. The first relates to the bird. I bought my leg quarters from Stellas, not a kosher butcher, and I opted for four leg quarters, rather than a whole chicken cut into four. Second is the addition of white pepper to the seasoning, a flavour that always reminds me of her home, because there was no black pepper grinder on her dining table, but rather a tiny bowl of ground white pepper.
She told me she always adds a splash of leftover white wine towards the end – also, I suspect, for balance, and ordinarily I’d have opted for a decent white that isn’t too aromatic, but I remembered that I had a little Domaine Bourdy vin jaune left in a bottle. Given it’s a match made in heaven with chicken – whether that’s in the classic Jura dish of roast chicken with vin jaune and morels, or the brilliant Seb Myers dish of oysters with an emulsion of chicken fat and oxidative Savagnin (essentially vin jaune-lite) at Planque – it was a no-brainer. An oxidative Savagnin or Manzanilla sherry would also work if you want a cheaper option to throw in.
And finally, as proud as I am of the beigey-brown colour scheme of The Schmaltz’s Instagram feed thus far, I am a child of Ottolenghi, and an absolute sucker for herbs, invariably finishing dishes with something verdant. I used dill because I think it’s criminally underrated, but also because, as Yiddishist Eve Jochnowitz writes in Tablet Mag’s 100 Most Jewish Foods, “it’s the seasoning that most characteristically delivers a Yidishn tam, that ineffable flavor of Jewishness, to a dish.” I therefore also thought it would be wise to use the stalks to flavour the brothy sauce underneath the chicken.
Serve with roasted hispi cabbage, as I did this time, or if you need your carbs, roast potatoes or my earlier latke recipe, minus the sour cream.
Ingredients
Four generous servings
4 chicken leg quarters, or 8 chicken thighs
2 brown onions, thinly sliced
100ml vin jaune
1 tin of apricot halves, with syrup (net weight 420g)
15g dill
2 tbsp Maldon sea salt
1 tbsp ground white pepper
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°c, and place the sliced onions in a baking tray with around 100ml of water, or enough to fill the tray to about 1cm deep. Also add a bouquet of dill stalks, tied with string.
Mix the rapeseed oil with the white pepper and brush the chicken on both sides with the mixture. Season liberally with salt afterwards.
Place the chicken pieces on the onions, and put in the oven for 20 minutes to brown.
Reduce heat to 160°c, then remove the tray from the oven, adding vin jaune to the liquid, being careful not to splash the chicken pieces.
Return to the oven for 10 minutes, before removing and adding the whole contents of the jar of apricots, syrup included, again being careful not to pour liquid on the chicken.
Cook for another 15 minutes and then remove the chicken pieces,1 if ready,2 allowing them to rest for 10 minutes as the onion, apricot, and vin jaune mixture continues to cook. During this period, you can pick the dill sprigs, ensuring you remove the harder, stalky bits.
To serve, remove the dill bouquet from the sauce and place into a serving bowl, adding the chicken pieces on top, with the apricots evenly placed around the dish. Finish with sprigs of dill.
If you’re using thighs instead of leg quarters, you can take it out 5 minutes earlier.
If you're nervous about undercooked chicken, like most Jewish mothers, you can insert a fork into the pieces, and if the liquid running out is clear, they’re cooked through.