Sauteed Chicken Thighs with Roasted Grapes Sauce

If you've never had roasted grapes before, please do yourselves a favour: try them now! You'll wonder how could you have lived without until now :)).

3/4 pound black or red seedless grapes, stemmed
3/4 pound seedless green grapes, stemmed
4 tbsp grapeseed oil or olive oil
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves, can be substituted with thighs (as I did)

2 tbsp cold unsalted butter
Kosher salt and black pepper
1/4 cup minced fresh chives (I used dried instead)

For the grape sauce:  Wash and dry all of your grapes and take them off of their stems. Take half of the green and half of the black grapes and puree in a blender.  Pour the puree through a sieve over a bowl and push through with a rubber spatula. Allow this to continue to drip into the bowl as you do the next steps.

Preheat your oven to 375 F.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, place the other half of your grapes on the lined pan and roast for 60 minutes total.  Half way through, at 30 minutes, flip them over gently using a spatula. Continue roasting.

Rinse and pat dry your chicken and pound with a meat mallet to flatten out just a bit.  Salt and pepper both sides of your chicken lightly.

Heat the grapeseed oil in  a heavy duty nonstick skillet or iron skillet on medium to medium high heat. Place your chicken pieces, thickest part down on the pan. Take a lid from a slightly smaller pan, as heavy a lid as you have and press it down on the chicken and leave it there.

Cook for about 5 minutes per side. 

Add strained grape purée 

and simmer until chicken is cooked through and juice is syrupy, about 5-8 minutes, depending on the thickness of your chicken.

Take the chicken pieces out of the pan and let sit covered on a serving plate. Dump the roasted grapes into the sauce and add the butter. 

Reduce the sauce down by simmering another 2-5 minutes, then spoon the sauce over the chicken and garnish with chopped chive.

I served it with a garnish of tarhonya (egg-based pasta grain) with fried bacon sprinkled on it, to balance the sweetness of the grapes. Enjoy!