Food: Spicy-Sweet Glazed Chicken

Tonight's dinner was fast and simple. It started with a salad (or, well, "salad") of sliced fresh ripe heirloom tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a smidge of balsamic vinegar.

Then I made baked chicken -- raw chicken pieces, placed in a baking dish and then covered with the following sauce:

For every 1-2 lbs of chicken parts,

1/2 cup apricot preserves (any kind -- the fancy stuff is often fruitier, but cheap will work. Peach works, too)
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vineger
hot sauce, to taste (I used about a tablespoon of Sriracha)

Put all of the above in a saucepan, heat over low heat until melted (stirring occasionally), and pour over the chicken.

Put the chicken-and-sauce in a preheated 350F oven and bake 45-ish minutes. Basically, you want the chicken cooked through (I use a meat thermometer to determine that), and you want it to develop a nice sweet-spicy crispy glaze. I basted it a few times -- just using a spoon to ladle sauce over the top -- during baking; I'm not sure it's necessary, but it did seem to help the glaze develop.

This was a very fast meal -- just ten minutes of prep for both dishes, plus forty-five minutes in the oven.