Chicken With Cranberry Vinegar

Cranberries are rich in Vitamin C and were an important staple fruit to Native Americans long before the Pilgrims arrived. They often were combined with meat and other ingredients in cakes known as pemmican.

Cranberry vinegar is a particularly tasty use of these tart berries. It is delicious added to fruit salads or carbonated sodas and provides a highly distinctive taste to ingredients in the "Chicken With Cranberry Vinegar" recipe below.

Quantities for the cranberry vinegar recipe are not exact because cranberries may juice up differently.

Cranberry Vinegar

• Cranberries, halved (two cups)
• White vinegar (enough to cover berries?about 1-1/2 cups)
• Sugar (2-1/4 cups)
• Water (2-1/4 cups, depending on how much juice the berries produce)

Place cranberries in a saucepan (not iron, copper, or aluminum; vinegar reacts with them). Add just enough vinegar to cover the cranberries, and heat almost to boiling. Remove from heat, cover, and let sit overnight.

The next day, strain out the berry pulp through cheesecloth and discard. Measure the remaining colored vinegar. Then make a syrup of equal parts sugar and water, using just under 1-1/2 times as much of each as you have vinegar. (If you have 2 cups of vinegar, measure out just under 3 cups of sugar and the same amount of water.) Boil the syrup until it threads off a spoon.

Measure out equal portions of sugar syrup and vinegar and place the mixture in a saucepan. Boil for 10 minutes. Cool and strain into bottles.

Chicken With Cranberry Vinegar

• 1 (2-1/2 pound) chicken, cut in small pieces
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Butter and oil as needed for frying, plus a bit more butter
• 15 baby carrots (more or less), chopped small
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup cranberry vinegar
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup beef stock
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup sour cream
• chopped parsley

Season the chicken with salt and pepper, and brown the pieces lightly in butter and oil. Place the chicken pieces on a dish, and set them aside. Pour off the chicken fat from your skillet, and add a bit more butter. Sauté the vegetables until wilted and lightly colored. Stir in the vinegar and bay leaf.

Return the chicken to the skillet, and add stock almost to cover the pieces. (You may use a bit more or a bit less stock, depending on the size of your skillet.) Simmer chicken pieces until they are soft and the stock has reduced—for about half an hour. Remove the chicken again, and place it on a serving dish. Add sour cream to the sauce in the skillet, and cook over high heat until thickened. Pour over the chicken, and garnish with parsley. Serve with noodles and a salad. Serves 4 to 5.

Tinky Weisblat writes about food for a variety of periodicals.

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