Competitive Cooking with High-Falutin' Chai-Smoked Chicken and Hot Apricot Sauce

Last weekend, mi esposo and I managed to get out of the house for a nice dinner on the town. We went to a well-lauded establishment and had a lovely, lovely meal, but as I read the menu, I wasn't gripped with that urgent, excited feeling of "OH! I've got to try that!" In fact, everything on the menu was pretty much standard fare that I've had before. Again, it was delicious, but, well, I kind of wanted to be dazzled with something I've never tried before. Take, "tea-smoking", for example.

I've heard of tea-smoking, or cooking meats at a high temperature over tea leaves, but I heretofore have never had the opportunity to try it. Maybe I need to try some more high-falutin' places on a more regular basis. But there's no reason that yours truly can't try her hand at things that sound high-falutin'. And I wanted to do better than that last memorable meal.

Fast forward to earlier today, when I was reading a food article on tea-smoked ribs. The author gave a detailed account of how to mimic the smoky flavor of an outdoor barbecue in any old plain-Jane residential oven. The article grabbed me. Here was my chance to make up for last weekend, to dazzle myself. Why in the world couldn't I jury-rig some kind of high-falutin' tea-smoked entree with whatever I had on hand?

There were no ribs in my fridge, but there were some chicken breasts in the freezer. I didn't have any smoky Chinese tea like Lapsang Suchong, but there was a box of seldom-used Chai. Chai-smoked chicken was sounding really good to me and it got my gears turning...Of course, I'd need a sauce. Wouldn't some kind of hot and spicy, apricot-y thing be fabulous with Chai? And I had some couscous and pine nuts...I could turn up the texture volume on that with the addition of some heavy cream. I was sure that if I added some steamed asparagus I could "ruin" (my competitive term for out-doing) the chef who made last weekend's dinner. A plan was in place.

Now, chicken breasts, the ubiquitous boneless, skinless variety, tend to cook very quickly. They can literally be a flash in the pan if you saute them, or a really quick dinner in the oven. Overcooking chicken breasts leads to the undesirable dry "rubber chicken effect" that seasoned palates bemoan endlessly. With the high heat required to get my tea leaves to smoke, how in the world was I going to avoid the rubber chicken effect?

Well, I never really thawed those frozen breasts. I softened the exterior slightly on the microwave's "thaw" setting for just a few minutes and threw my chicken briquettes on a rack over a roasting pan that had five tea bags opened and scattered across the bottom, plus a little chicken stock. I don't know if the stock was really necessary, but I feared a flash fire of tea confetti if they didn't heat up gradually. I covered the whole shootin' match with some foil and threw it into a 450-degree oven for about 35 minutes.

The flavor was very subtle, but so nice. I amplified it slightly by brewing a scant amount of super-brisk Chai tea, combining that with apricot preserves and hot sauce that I reduced to a slightly thick consistency for a complimentary sauce. The couscous, cooked in heavy cream and scattered with pine nuts was a great, rich counterpoint.

I did it. I "ruined" that chef from last weekend and made my own dazzling, high-falutin' dinner. I will definitely work this into the rotation on a regular basis.