Chicken with Cherry Sauce, also, My husband, the cooking fiend

It's Cherry Season!!!

Last year at Cherry Season, my friend Maggie and I invented the Best Cherry Sauce Recipe There Ever Was. This year, I had to ask my husband to make it, based on some very nebulous directions that I had scribbled into my Livejournal. These included directions like "Add a whole lot of Five Spice." Well, he followed my crazy directions but then told me exactly what he did so that we can emulate it in the future. So today, I present Chicken with Cherry Sauce!

Chicken with Cherry Sauce

by Lynne Powell, Maggie Kolb, and formalized by Adam Terio

1 whole roasting chicken

olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika

1 cup sour cherries, pitted

1/2 cup sweet cherries, pitted

1/4 cup Smart Balance 

2t salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 of a bottle of red wine (estimate here)

1t five spice

1/2t black pepper

splash of apple juice

Coat chicken with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, garlic, paprika. Roast chicken. While chicken is roasting, start the sauce.

Saute sweet and sour cherries in Smart Balance. Add salt and sugar and continue to saute until cherries are coated. Add wine, five spice, black pepper, and a splash of apple juice. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to medium-low. Smash cherries with a fork or potato masher and allow to continue reducing until chicken is ready to eat. 

We serve the chicken with the sauce on the side, as if you do have leftovers of both, they reheat better separately. This is traditionally (both times) served with cous cous and corn on the cob. 

In other news, my husband has been a cooking fiend today. He started out making breakfast burritos with eggs, cheese and chorizo. On our list of things to cook or prep are this fabulous dinner, a cherry pie (which he made, and we had for dessert), swiss chard empanadas, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and beer. And since I can't stand up, he has been doing everything himself! I did help pit the cherries because I could sit and do it in about 10 minutes now that we have a cherry pitter. I know it's a uni-tasker. But it's probably even more useful than my favorite gadget, the mango pitter, because cherry season lasts longer. 

So he's been cooking. The ice cream is cooling before we put it in the ice cream maker, the pie has been partially eaten, the dinner was demolished, and the water for the beer has been boiled. If we don't get to the empanadas, oh well, there's always tomorrow (it's more important that the beer get made actually, based on my due date!) When I met him, my husband knew how to make three things--Boboli pizza, chicken stir fry, and taco salad. (He claims he knew how to make other things but that's all we ever ate at his house unless I cooked!) So after today he has made a believer of me!! He even noticed that he had extra heavy cream from the ice cream, so he made whipped cream for the pie! I'm seriously impressed, and I love him dearly!