- Autumn Apple Chicken

Dearly Beloved Fans of Hounds Who Cook,

I, Eli, was reminiscing the other day about the most wonderful chicken we made once for guests. This is the perfect time of year for it, since it's all about apple. We were canning apple jelly at the time and the Gute was expiring in the heat and humidity of the kitchen so we put one batch of juice from the apples into the fridge to make something of it later. Guthrie is energetic about new scents and smells but not good with tedious repetition, which jelly making can be, what with all of the boiling and straining and boiling again. That extra juice, however, came in very handy in this tasty apple chicken. Gute commandeered the kitchen that day. For dogs we outdo ourselves on the garlic and skip the onion since it disrupt our neurology. Here's his recipe for feeding persons:

Guthrie's Autumn Apple Chicken
Me's independent rating: 3 of 3

4 boneless chicken breasts (I, Guthrie, debone them myself for a snack for later)
4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil (for your good health)
1 sliced up onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed (dogs use more)
2 apples, thinly sliced (peels and all)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 cup unsweetened apple juice
2 teaspoons arrowroot
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar (we use raw, but I suppose since you're cooking it it's no matter...)

Saute the apple slices, onion, garlic, and thyme in (only) 2 teaspoons of the olive oil in a cast iron pan, if you have one, for about 4 minutes. Then set aside. Add 2 more teaspoons olive oil to the pan and brown the chicken breast 2-3 minutes per side until they are golden. Mix (only) 1 tablespoon of the apple juice with the arrowroot in a little cup and set aside. Add the remaining apple juice and the vinegar to the chicken and cover and simmer until just cooked through. Check after 6 minutes. Remove the chicken, leaving the juice in the pan, and set aside, covered. Stir the arrowroot mixture into the juices in the pan and cook over high heat, scraping up the browned bits until the juice is thickened - about two minutes. (This is where a cast iron pan is the best of all possible pans.) Return the apple - onion mixture to the sauce in the pan and heat it through. Season with salt and pepper and serve up with the chicken breast.

Serves 4 persons or 1 hound. (Leave off the onion for the hound.)

Tips from Guthrie: Get a cast iron pan. There's nothing better than cast iron for cooking meats on the stovetop. This browning of meat sauce and scraping up the bits as it thickens in particular is well suited to cast iron. You will notice arrowroot in this recipe. Some folk would use cornstarch or flour, but we love arrowroot. We don't use corn in any form in the home (except the Person, Me, occassionally splurges on a buttery corn on the cob meal) because it's a likely allergen for many eaters. This might be because so much is genetically modified that you can't get non-GMO corn in most products, or it might be because corn is just a tickly topic and a lot of people and hounds alike get allergic to it. We dogs don't judge. We also don't eat corn. The thought makes my fur itch.

Tips from Eli: If you're not going to just eat the chicken raw, this is a good way to eat it.

Sometime this week we have been promised a trip to an apple orchard where we will procure unpasturized apple juice which we will then make into our own raw apple cider vinegar. Guthrie wants to take a swig of the pre-vinegar stage, which is hard cider (he calls it moonshine due to our southern roots), which he thinks would help his itchy skin a lot more than the vinegar stage, which he has to eat now. We will of course reveal our special hound process for making our own apple cider vinegar as soon as can be reasonably expected.