Flash Chicken Sauté with Cider and Almonds, Brussels Sprouts & Yukon Gold Potatoes

To encourage myself to introduce more variety into our meals, I’ve been keeping one cookbook I want to cook from more on the dining room table (along with the food dictionary, which is crucial for the inevitable food questions that arise, like what exactly is a tangelo?).

If you know me at all, you’ll understand that this is a huge personal challenge for me, because I like everything in its place, and books don’t live on the dining room table. Anyway... during meals, I flip through the chosen book as we chit chat, and together Sophia and I choose something new we’d like to try.

This is the most recent recipe selected by Sophia from The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper. I suspect she picked it because in the picture, the chicken is featured with fresh green beans. Green beans aren’t in season yet, so I instead served roasted Brussels sprouts (don’t knock ’em if you haven’t tried ’em) and roasted Yukon gold potatoes, which were delightfully crispy and perfect for soaking up extra pan sauce.

The recipe called for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but out of frugality I instead used organic boneless skinless thighs. This substitution necessitated additional cooking time, but otherwise the flavor was still excellent. The pan sauce, which you make from reduced chicken broth, cider vinegar and butter was simple yet delicious, and the final product was topped with a sprinkling of coarse chopped roasted, salted almonds. Yum! I declared after dinner that I now want everything with cider pan sauce and almonds! Actually, come to think of it, this is the second recipe I’ve written about featuring cider pan sauce. Perhaps this is becoming a thing?

The only reason the dish didn’t get five stars is that the sauce is still very thin, even after reduction. Next time, I'll either reduce the chicken broth more up front or let the finished sauce reduce further before adding the butter. Otherwise, this was flavorful, with a rich yet lively sauce. Seems kind of “fancy” for a weeknight dinner, but was actually quick and easy.