Crispy Cherry Glazed Chicken Thighs

This past weekend marked our one-year anniversary. Cliche as it may be, our wedding was the best day of my life – surrounded by our people who showed up ready to go all in on our agenda, my cheeks ached from smiling for approximately 60 hours straight, and every second was filled with wonder.

Planning a wedding is a meticulous sport, a microcosm for the life of shared logistics you commit to when you say 'I do.' So it was to my sheer delight that not only did we pull it off, but that despite all that engineering, many of the most searing memories were totally unplanned – a missing cake-topper fiasco, the flower girl's mid-aisle twirl, the gusts of wind that billowed my veil such that I had to be tied to the chuppah, the surprise stickers bearing our faces that started appearing on everyone's suit jackets, and closing down the dance floor with Sinatra's "New York, New York."

These vignettes remind me that what makes our married life so sweet is the balance of careful planning with the unexpected. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to chicken thighs.

As with most brides, I had a few fixations when it came to our wedding aesthetics. These were "must haves" that felt fundamental to our vision – gold-rimmed oyster shells, twinkly lights, a raw bar, eucalyptus and foxtail amaranth, and most importantly, a white cake with maraschino cherries. Not just any white cake though – it had to be from the bakery where my in-laws' wedding cake came from. This bakery was, however, not close to the venue.

The bakery skeptically agreed, but couldn’t recommend it given the hot June weather, the ephemeral texture of buttercream, and the three-hour drive from bakery to wedding venue. We coaxed a cousin to do our bidding, which entailed blasting the AC and reinforcing the box holding the multi-tiered tower in her car for the long haul.

Fast forward to 8PM – Andrew and I are dizzy from being hoisted into chairs for a frenetic Horrah, my tight bun having succumbed to gravity, and Andrew's shirt fully translucent from sweat. We're rushed over to our 'silent cake cutting' (one of the many inside baseball terms you learn when planning a wedding). The cake was a vision – retro, classic, and so tacky that it wasn't tacky—with two tiers decorated with elaborate ribbons of buttercream and ornamented with neon red cherries. As we took our perfunctory photo feeding each other bites of the chocolate cake filled with cannoli cream, my heart was racing with adrenaline that carried me back to the dance floor where I twirled endlessly until finally, somehow, it was over.

The morose thing about the cliche of your wedding being "the best day of your life" is that on the other side is just…life. The task now is to live it, with someone else, in all its mundanity and through its hardships, its endless logistics and responsibilities, until you die. In a way, a wedding is just a chance for your community to give you a big ol' push into that abyss, saying with their cocktail-attire clad presence, "yes, we agree with you, this is a great idea, off you go!"

One year in, I can feel the flywheel of that push is still behind us. Without a wedding to plan or a cross-country move to make, nor a baby to raise or garden to grow, in this moment we're forced to just exist. We go to work, we come home, we cook dinner, we watch television – it's routine, it's comfort, but it's not mundane.

Enter the crispy chicken thigh. Staring down the barrel of our adult lives, I sometimes envision us years in the future. How will we look? Where are we? What will our kids be like? What will we be eating? This last question, perhaps the least consequential of them all, is also perhaps the easiest to predict. The answer is probably chicken thighs.

Andrew started making crispy chicken thighs a few years back, and it's become a workhorse meal on weeknights as much as a celebratory centerpiece for dinner parties. His version involves harissa and cherry tomatoes, dotted with crumbled feta and a scattering of chopped parsley. It's a go-to that we can reliably throw together without much thought, but with the promise of big flavor and hearty substance.

On our anniversary weekend, we were 'out east' and stopped by the farmers market. A basket of fresh local cherries, the first of their season, were catching the sunlight just right and I had no choice but to take them home. In the mood for romanticizing everything, it became apparent to me that these cherries were meant for us – a sweet echo of those neon red maraschinos that crowned our cake a year ago.

We had to do something with them that struck a balance between the consistency of everyday life post "best day ever" with a little sparkle of that perfect night. And so we've arrived at the Cherry Glazed Chicken Thighs – a weeknight meal bursting with romance, a complex flavor profile made from just a few ingredients, and a riff on one of our classics.

This is the dish I know I'll be serving up to our children when we're old and grey, this internet artifact long forgotten and an unknown future ahead of us all, ready to conquer it together. It's our marriage in a pan: reliable, surprising, and sweet enough to make the ordinary feel extraordinary.

Ingredients

4 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (boneless works too – see note)
Kosher salt and black pepper
Olive oil
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1-2 cups cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
½ cup white wine or sake
Parsley

Directions

Prep and preheat: Preheat the oven to 375°F and keep a rimmed baking sheet nearby. Pat chicken thighs dry and season generously with salt and pepper on both sides.
Sear the chicken: Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat (aluminum is best). Place the chicken skin-side down and leave undisturbed until the fat has rendered and skin is golden brown and crispy, about 8-10 minutes. Flip and sear the other side for 2-3 minutes. Transfer thighs skin-side up to the baking sheet. If working in batches, repeat with remaining thighs.
Finish in oven: Place the baking sheet in the oven and cook until internal temperature reaches 165°F, about 12-15 minutes.
Make the glaze: Leaving all the rendered fat in the skillet, add garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add cherries, maple syrup, fish sauce, soy sauce, a few grinds of black pepper, and white wine. Cook, stirring occasionally, until cherries have softened and released their juices and the sauce has thickened slightly, about 5-7 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
Glaze and serve: Return the cooked chicken thighs to the pan skin-side up and spoon the cherry glaze over them. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.

Note: If you prefer boneless chicken thighs, skip the oven-bake. Once the skin has rendered, flip and cook fully on the other side, which should take about five minutes.