Thursday Dinner: Broiled Chicken with Fig Sauce

This was from this week's Bittman column and it turned out really well. Some notes:

1. I used a South African viogner (Yalumba) for the wine
2. I strained the sauce and finished it with a Tbs of butter, then served the figs (so full of goodness) like a relish on the side.
3. Using Meyer lemon added a great flavor, but probably not enough acidity.
4. Boy oh boy do we need to get a broiler pan... I had to pull the battery out of the smoke alarm and the house still smells like broiling chicken.

We ate the chicken with boiled potatoes and quick-fried chard. When boiling the potatoes, I tried a suggestion from McGee: I added them to cold water (without salt), then slowly brought them to the boil (more than 30 minutes to get there). This is supposed to fix the starch throughout the potato and prevent the outer layers from sloughing off. It sure is time consuming, but the potatoes ended up with a really nice texture, so I think I'll be doing this again.