Chicken with Blackberry Sauce

I told you a while back I was working on a blackberry sauce idea, and last night I made it happen. I baked some chicken, with thin slices of lemon and rosemary sprigs on top to give it a kick - but honestly it didn't even need that. Plain salt-and-peppered baked chicken would have been just fine. Maybe even better, so the blackberry sauce could do it's own thing uninterrupted. ANYWAY, I'm low on brain power this morning, but I actually remembered to write down what I did last night, so I have a sauce recipe for you. Go me.

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SAVORY BLACKBERRY SAUCE

I am specifying that this is savory, because it's definitely a meat sauce. You will not want this on your ice cream.

3 tbs butter (Yeeeah. I know.)
3 tbs very finely diced onion
5 tbs seedless blackberry preserves
1/2 cup (more or less) whole blackberries - thawed if frozen
Salt, black pepper, white pepper and sage - to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan. I'm not going to lie, this was a SUPER rich sauce because of all the butter. And I used real butter. I'm not sure how to cut it down (maybe use margarine?), or even if it should be altered. A little goes a long way, but I think the point of a sauce is not to drown the meat, but to compliment it. Yeah, that sounds like a good rationalization. Let's stick with that.

Also, since the sauce is so rich, this made probably more than needed. I was thinking I'd rather have too much than not enough. So I'll probably scale these amounts back next time.

SO. MELT ALL THAT BUTTER and add in the onion. I diced mine extra fine, so they kind of melt away as the sauce cooks. Onion chunks in sauces bug me. Then add in some salt and pepper, just to get the ball rolling. I imagine you can make this without onion if you want a sweeter sauce. The onion gives it that good-with-meat flavor I was looking for.

Stir in 5 spoons of preserves, one at a time, and stir it all around until it melts. Here's the fun part - season to taste. I used a good bit of salt and black pepper, and a little bit of white pepper and sage. I liked the flavor I got, but you might want a different flavor!

At the end, dump in some fresh or thawed blackberries for prettiness sake. They taste great, too, but you will get the seed crunch if you eat them. I find that's not too bad, but it definitely could turn someone off texturally.

So hooray! This is my first sauce recipe I made myself from a handful of vague ideas I found online. I was pretty proud of it. I considered adding other things - honey, lemon, garlic powder...but I left it kind of plain and simple on purpose. Next time, I might experiment more.

I served this with garlic roasted spinach and sesame green beans, not because they all go together so well, but because those are all the things I most wanted in the world.