Chicken with Apricots

The Parsi community of India is of Persian descent. When the Parsis fled Iran in the tenth century, they settled on India’s west coast, where they managed to preserve not only their religious traditions—they are Zoroastrians—but many of their culinary traditions as well. This delicately sweet-and-sour dish of chicken cooked with dried apricots is part of that tradition. I have a Parsi friend who puts in a healthy glug of Madeira toward the end of the cooking. Parsis picked up many customs not only from their Gujarati neighbors but also from their neighbors and masters in nineteenth-century Bombay, the British. This dish is generally served with a mountain of very fine, crisp potato straws—you can just buy a large packet of them—but may also be served with rice.