Thanks for Nothing?

A friend gave me a huge bag of cherries fresh off the tree in their village. A nice gift, right? You’re not looking at a bowl of cherries, but a bowl of cherries that I have painstakingly pitted. I’m not sure how long it took, exactly, but in dog years the family pet wouldn’t have made it to the end. It was more work than assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA, which should be the measure of all labor on the planet.

For years I have been trying to imitate a dish I used to order in a Seattle restaurant. As far as I can remember, it was chicken with cherries, vinegar, and rye seeds. I don’t think that I have ever really pulled it off in the many times I’ve tried to conjure up this dish in my kitchen. I’m too far removed from that restaurant in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle to be able to pull off a counterfeit, but I did make a pretty tasty dish last night.

The red wine vinegar is crucial in this dish. I don’t really know why, but if I had to venture a guess it would be to counteract the sweetness of the cherries. I also cooked this with a full head of cabbage, a couple of onions, and a cup of red wine.

I first began by roasting the back side of a whole chicken in the over. On the stove top I sautéed the onions in a bit of oil then added the cabbage and cherries with the wine and cooked this down. I added the vinegar to taste towards the end. When the bottom side of the chicken was cooked I took it out and placed it on top of the vegetable mixture and put it back in the oven to cook the top side.