Roast Chicken Thighs with Apples

When I was growing up, we went apple picking every fall. Usually with our cousins, but sometimes alone, we filled giant paper bags with McIntosh apples, eating them as we picked until we were full of sticky apple juice… and even then, we still had apples for days after.

I don’t remember how we finished them all… likely out of hand, or in my mom’s famous Apple Dapple (like apple cobbler on steroids), but I distinctly remember the picking part, the smell of apples beginning to rot into the ground, which should be unpleasant but isn’t… it just smells like the beginnings of cider.

For years, as soon as the first whiff of fall appears in the air, I’ve had the craving to go apple picking, to head out into the countryside and find a place filled with apple trees, to remember that distinct feeling of fall I used to get when I still spent fall in the northeast. We went once when I was in high school in Massachusetts, to pick up cider doughnuts and bottles of fresh cider, but I wanted the picking experience, the hands-on feeling of gathering my own food… even if I did nothing to make it grow.

Luckily, this year I found people who were just as excited as I was at the prospect of apple picking, and so the Shoe Fiend, a friend of hers — hereafter known as Professor Snark — and I boarded a commuter rail train out of Paris on Saturday to see what we could find at the Ceuillette de Viltain, about an hour outside of Paris. We spent the ride there making jokes, sharing our snarky and sarcastic senses of humor, and chatting about our entertainment vices and guilty television shows, and the hour-long train ride zipped by.

A half-hour walk later, we had arrived at the farm to find much more than we were expecting.

Not only apples, but a variety of fruits and vegetables awaited being picked. We went first for the last of the season’s tomatoes, easily filling our plastic bags before realizing that all three of us had no one to feed aside from ourselves — Professor Snark’s husband is working in Japan, and the Country Boy is back in Paziols for les vendanges–, and a dozen gorgeous tomatoes apiece would probably suffice.

We continued onwards, admiring the roses but leaving them in favor of corn, cherry tomatoes and green beans… and of course, apples.

I headed straight for the row of boskoop trees, my favorite, and started filling my bag, envisioning cider doughnuts and applesauce and all the things I could make with several kilos of apples. I inhaled the powerful, pungent scent of rotting apples — it sent me straight back in time to apple picking with my brothers and sisters and cousins — and I ate an apple right off the tree, standing there in the orchard. It was delicious.

We filled our wheelbarrow to the brim with produce — I added a potimarron — and we promised to come back someday with the Country Boy and his car, to buy bushels of potatoes and even more apples, and maybe some squash, who knows.

An elderly woman walked past with her own wheelbarrow as we stood in line to pay; when we saw the prices, I understood her zeal at picking green beans, presumably to can — everything I bought cost a mere 12 euros.

We had come prepared with bags and backpacks, and I snapped this shot of the farm as we headed back out onto the highway for the walk back to the train station. A woman in a car stopped us as we walked, asking where to go… I guess she could tell where we’d been.

On the ride back, we dipped into our purchases, snacking on candy-sweet cherry tomatoes and gorgeous apples, promising to “do it again sometime.” I hope we do.

In the meantime, I’ve got a giant pile of apples to use up. Professor Snark has already admitted to me that she’s feeling a bit lazy on the applesauce front, and for the sake of full disclosure, I’ve done nothing so far except eat a couple of apples raw. But I’m planning on an applesauce adventure soon (the pot I was going to use is currently serving as an incubator for my first batch of homemade yogurt), and maybe this recipe again, which I made last year but have yet to post.

Apples (or a combination of apples and pears, I’ve done it both ways), are thinly sliced with onions and whole cloves of garlic, then sautéed and finally roasted with chicken thighs. What results is almost a jam, thick from the fruit pectin and made sweet from caramelized onions and apples.

I make it when I have company, cooking the apples and onions together ahead of time and popping it into the oven when my guests arrive. The smells are of autumn, and the taste is extraordinary.

Roast Chicken Thighs with Apples

1 tsp. olive oil
3 apples (or a combination of apples and pears), thinly sliced
2 onions, thinly sliced
4-5 whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic
1/2 lemon
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 chicken thighs
1/4 cup white wine or apple cider

Heat the olive oil in an oven-proof skillet over low heat and add the apples and onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the fruit and onions begin to soften. Cook about 15-20 minutes. Add the garlic and lemon juice.

(Note: I transfer this mixture to a baking dish at this point because I have a toaster oven. If you have a real oven, you can simply place the chicken thighs into the skillet you were cooking in and put the whole thing in the oven.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Transfer the mixture into a baking dish, deglazing the pan with white wine or cider (if you’re using the oven-proof skillet, just add the liquid to the pan and stir to loosen the roasted bits). Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper, and roast about 30 minutes, until the skin is crisp and the joint between the leg and thigh moves freely (use a thermometer to check for doneness if you like). Serve the chicken with the roasted fruit and onions, as well as bread to mop up the sauce.