Balsamic Vinegar Fig Chicken

A friend dropped off a bag of figs from her back yard yesterday. So that is my Tuesday Night Challenge. Thus…Pan Seared Chicken Breasts with Fig Jam.

I’ve never made Fig Jam before, but I kinda winged it after looking at a handful of recipes. Most had a LOT of sugar, so I went light here. I boiled 1/2 cup of water with 1 tbsp of sugar to create my ‘simple syrup’. To this I added 6 cut up figs, the zest of one lemon and the juice of said lemon. I did this in a large pot so I would have a lot of surface space to cook it down. This part of the recipe takes the longest. Everything else is quick, so you can do this whenever you want. After about half an hour I put this into a small food processor and made it into the jam-like consistency and set it aside. It tasted pretty good.

While this boiled, I made my salad. I took a cucumber from my garden, did a light peal to leave alternating strips and then cut these into 1/4-ish rounds. In a bowl I poured 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar and 1/3 cup of water. My seasoning on this always changes. Tonight I did some dried basil, garlic powder, kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper. I also had a jar of baby kosher dills in the fridge with 2 dills left, so I poured about 1/4 cup of this into the mix. This went into the fridge. It’s a quick-pickle, so about an hour was fine.

Cooking time. In my cast iron pan I heated some olive oil and quick seared some thin chicken breasts. Just sear them and set them aside, do not cook through.

In the same pan add minced garlic (a couple/few tablespoons worth) on a low heat. Add your fig jam. Cook a bit. Add balsamic vinegar to taste, about 1/4 cup. I found this to be thick, so I added about 1/2 cup of chicken stock. Stir often until well blended. Place in the semi-cooked chicken. Spoon on the sauce from the pan to cover. Add a handful of cut figs. This goes into an oven pre-heated at 400·° for about 10 minutes, longer if you aren’t using think chicken breasts. I checked my temperature and I was at 156°, so I hit it with a hi broil for 2 minutes to brown it off and pulled it out.

We served this with steam broccoli and the cucumber salad, which was very chilled at this point.

It was a delightful meal, thank you Portrait Painter for the figs!