Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?

Yes, apricot jam adds a perfect unexpected note to this summery sandwich of chicken, goat cheese and arugula. Recipe below.

As anyone who spends much time in the kitchen knows, inspiration can come from anywhere. A recipe you’ve seen, a farmers market find, what’s on sale at the grocery store—even something you found in the back of your pantry. The inspiration for the sandwich above began with a photograph. Specifically, this one:

It was featured in an email from epicurious.com—the subject may have been sandwiches or quick meals or who remembers now. The photo had no caption, and I never found the recipe it was illustrating, but something about the sandwich in that picture looked fresh and invitingly complex, with multiple flavors and textures coming into play.

I am very visual. I like cookbooks with lots of photos—I don’t need to see step-by-step process images, unless the technique is difficult or arcane, but I do want to see what a dish is supposed to look like when it’s done. A good food photo can help me decide whether or not to tackle a dish; it can also send me off in an entirely different direction.

That’s what this picture did. Realizing I wasn’t going to find the original recipe for it, I moved on to thinking about what kind of sandwich I might like to make and eat. I typed up this brief note to myself and stored it both on my computer desktop and in the back of my brain:

Panini or pita or tortilla wrap with chicken or turkey or duck, sautéed apples or apricot jam and cheese—goat cheese? Gruyere? Brie?

From time to time, I would see the file on the desktop and start thinking about the sandwich. Before long, it had evolved in my head to the sandwich I ended up making this weekend, with just five ingredients: Leftover roast chicken, goat cheese, arugula, apricot jam and a baguette. Okay, six if you count the salt, which was crucial.

It. Was. Wonderful. Please indulge me as I engage in what I hope will be seen as an uncharacteristic bit of bragging. But this is more about growth in the kitchen than how cool I am. First, this sandwich was entirely mine. As virtually everyone from home cooks to rockstar chefs does from time to time, I’ll occasionally start with a recipe or recipes and adapt, tweak, substitute, etcetera until I’ve come up with something inspired by the original, but more or less my own. Not this baby. After really very little thinking about it, the sandwich kind of popped into my head fully formed, not an adaptation, but my own creation. Second, from the time I’d decided what it was going to be, I knew exactly what it would taste like. Every time I thought of making it, I could taste it. This doesn’t often happen to me. Usually when I start playing with food ideas in my head, I’ll kinda sorta know how the finished product will taste. On this one, I nailed it.

And how did it taste? Summery. Light but satisfyingly filling. Every ingredient played an important role—there was nothing you could remove and have it taste as good, and there was nothing more to add. I always enjoy roast chicken, both for its own flavor and for its blank canvas quality that makes it work so well with so many different ingredients. The sweetness of the apricot jam played off the goat cheese perfectly, each counterbalancing the other. The arugula added a nice peppery crunch. The baguette, which had been the biggest question mark for me, was exactly the right choice, crusty and chewy, but without any multi-grained assertiveness to get in the way of the other flavors. Even the lowly salt played a crucial role as I said earlier. As I mixed the chicken and the apricot jam, I was proceeding cautiously; I didn’t suddenly want some cloying sweet & sour chicken thing happening. Marion and I were both picking and tasting, and she suggested a little salt before adding more jam. Bingo. It brought the apricot flavor forward and boosted the chicken’s flavor at the same time.

Marion—not exactly my toughest critic, but the one whose opinion matters most—liked it a lot. One of the interesting things she said about it was that it was unlike anything else I’d ever made for her. And when I thought about it, I had to agree.

Chicken, Goat Cheese & Apricot Jam Sandwich
Serves 2 to 3

2 cups roast chicken, chilled or room temperature, torn/cut into smallish chunks [see Kitchen Notes]
3 tablespoons apricot jam
salt, to taste
baguette
fresh arugula
crumbled goat cheese [see Kitchen Notes]

Place chicken in large bowl. Gently stir in apricot jam with a wooden spoon to coat chicken. As you add the jam cut up any largish chunks of apricot with kitchen shears. Season with salt, tasting as you go. You will notice the apricot taste coming forward when you’ve added enough salt.

Cut 6-inch sections of baguette. Gently press down on them from the top to slightly compress the bread into a broader shape. Slice in half lengthwise and place bottom half on plate. Arrange a generous handful of arugula on bottom slice of bread and spoon chicken/jam mixture on top of it. Sprinkle crumbled goat cheese over the chicken—I put maybe a little less than 1/4-cup on each sandwich. Place the top slice on, well, top. Compress the sandwich gently. Serve.

Kitchen Notes

Keep the chicken simple. I used a mix of dark and white meat from a store-bought roast chicken, which meant I didn’t even have to heat up the kitchen. You could also roast some chicken thighs or pan roast them if you don’t feel like heating up the kitchen with the oven. I would avoid grilled chicken for these sandwiches—the smokiness would introduce a whole new taste element that, to me, is unnecessary here.

So many goat cheeses, so little time. Back in the day, a Greek market was the only place you’d be likely to come across goat cheese. Now it’s everywhere. When you’re buying it, specifically look for a crumbly kind. Or do like I did and ask the cheesemonger. The helpful guy at Whole Foods directed me to a mild Bucheron aged goat cheese from France. While it was definitely goat cheese, it had a less pronounced tang than most do, with a creamy finish. Keep the cheese refrigerated until you’re ready to use it—that will help it crumble better.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 67/2/2008

Small Bites: Drink, eat, look and watch right. 33 reasons to drink tea, 11 things you should eat that you don’t, sexy apron strings and the return of “Bam!”, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Gershwin x 3: Rhapsody in Blue done three ways. Gershwin plays Gershwin [thanks, YouTube], Graffman plays Gershwin, and Gershwin’s greatest composition elevates an airline, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?