Something a bit like Persian Chicken

After a thirty hour megaflightathon from Kuala Lumpur to LA there was really only one thing I wanted to do: sleep.  Yet I understood that being full was far more important than being laid out unconscious on the sofa, and in my new (five week) post as chef, babysitter and general dogsbody at my sister's little house in Culver City, guess who was cooking dinner?  It is at times like these it is imperative to be able to reach up one's sleeve and pull out a really quick, really easy and really really tasty plate of food.  Somehow, despite having just completed three increasingly painful flights (tip of the day: never, and I really mean this, never fly United) and having not cooked a meal for over six months, that is precisely what I managed to do.

The following recipe, though in this instance I think it's probably a bit ambitious to call it that, is based on something I once prepared with a little guidance from the wonderful Claudia Roden.  I forget which book it came from but in any case I'd advise buying all of them.  Anyway, Ms Roden's recipe was most likely called something along the lines of Persian Chicken and it incorporated dried fruit, almonds and spices alongside lots of basmati rice, a great deal of butter and a plump and beautifully dissected (or in my case mercilessly hacked apart) chicken, a large pot and a hot oven.  It wasn't the first recipe to spring to mind at the end of an inconceivably bad melange of flights and stopovers, but having gazed in total disbelief at the fridge for a full 5 minutes (a fridge!  A fridge, dammit!  With food in!) my eyes finally came to rest on some chicken thighs (organic/cornfed/free range goes without saying on this blog, kids), and under some catfood and a packet of lentils in an adjacent cupboard I unearthed some dried apricots, a few raisins and a jar of cinnamon, so it was obviously meant to be.

Out came one onion, chopped as finely as a jetlagged blonde with a sharp knife dared, which was softened in a large knob of butter in a lovely big, shallow pan.  Once the onion was translucent and starting to turn golden it came back out and was "set to one side", as they say, and in its place went the six bits of chicken.  They were browned on each side, I all the while marveling at the notion that one could purchase chicken thighs that were both skinless and boneless (the free world, eh?), before adding a teaspoon of cinnamon, a handful of raisins and about two fistfulls of chopped dried apricots.  At this point I could barely refrain from sticking my face directly into the pan but instead I soldiered on with putting the onion back in and adding some hot chicken stock (Knorr, always - as if anyone really ever has fresh stock to hand), probably about a pint of it, before keeping it simmering, covered, for half an hour or thereabouts.  In the meantime, I busied myself with boiling the kettle and sticking on some basmati rice, and at curtain up I heaped the chicken and apricots up on top of a pile of the rice and spilt most of the juices down my front.

This end result (the plate of food, not me covered in food) is depicted in the not-particularly-appealing photo to the left, and thus, belly full of comforting rice and nose full of the sweet smell of cinnamon, I fell into an real bed with an actual duvet... and was out cold in seconds.