Couscous Stuffed Chicken

It’s been raining a lot lately, so the cooking has come back indoors. It’s been happening quite a bit, but there have been a lot of repeats, so nothing worth really putting on here.

However, the other day I was watching the Food Network, and Guy’s Big Bite (Hosted by Guy Fieri) was on. Guy made some chicken breasts that he stuffed with a plain couscous and feta cheese, so I decided I was going to take that idea and run with it. In my normal fashion, I can’t make something simple, so I took the basic idea and tweaked it a little bit.

For starters, get your oven preheated to 375. While that’s happening, trim up your chicken breasts and prepare your couscous. The basic recipe for making couscous is like making stuffing. Boil 1-1/4 cups of water with a splash of Olive Oil and seasonings of your choice, then add the couscous, remove from heat and let it sit for 5 minutes.

For the chicken, we’re looking for some big, thick breasts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After you’ve trimmed them, you’ve got to cut a “pocket” that you’ll fold your couscous mixture into.

Try not to go all of the way through, but if/when you do, it’s not too big of a deal. It just makes things a bit more messy.

Now that they chicken is ready, and the 5 minutes of rest time is going on the couscous, it’s time to add a bit extra to the mix.

I decided to use a few cloves of garlic, and some fresh basil and flat-leaf parsley from out garden on the porch.

With a mezzaluna, the chopping of everything goes very quickly. I’d really recommend getting one if you don’t already have one. So, in the 2nd picture above, I’ve got the basil, parsley, and garlic chopped and about a half cup of feta.

Toss the feta, parsley, basil, and garlic in with the couscous and mix everything together until equally distributed.

After mixed, just grab a spoon and stuff the pockets of the chicken with your mixture. Try to leave enough room to be able to somewhat close each breast. After they’re stuffed, you’ll have a bunch of extra couscous left over, but don’t worry, we’ll use that. For now, get a large pan going on medium heat with enough Extra Virgin Olive Oil down to make one loop around the pan. After the pan is up to temperature, it’s time for the chicken to go in.

You’re going to let the chicken go for about 3-5 minutes on each side, just enough to make them slightly browned. While you’re doing this, grab a 9x13 or something similar (I used a Pyrex), and put the remaining couscous in the bottom of the pan. Give it a drizzle of olive oil as well, and a tablespoon or so of water.

Once the chicken is browned like above, go ahead and put it on top of the bed of couscous in the baking dish, give it a dash of salt and pepper, and cover it in foil.

You can see, the chicken is still pink, but that’s why it’s going in the oven, so don’t worry too much about that. Cover in foil and bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

When they come out, cut each breast in half to serve, and of course, you can also make sure that they’re cooked all of the way through at this time. Serve with the couscous from below each piece of chicken.

The dish is amazingly simple to make, and rather easy on the palate as well. No one flavor is overpowering and you could easily serve this with almost any vegetable of your choosing. I was thinking while we were eating dinner that next time, I’d like to try this with a smearing of pesto on the chicken as well.

Also, you could easily make this south-western-like by adding a few peppers to the mix and maybe a few tomatoes… it really seems to show off the versatility of both the chicken and the couscous, as you can do almost anything with either of them.

And now, strawberry rhubarb crumble!

Lots of cooking this weekend folks. In fact, right now I’m in the midst of an ill-fated attempt to make my own cheese (more on that later), but I did make a delicious strawberry rhubarb crumble. I was inspired by our awesome farmers market and signs of spring. You can get the recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rhubarb-Strawberry-Crunch/Detail.aspx

So, you start with three cups of strawberries and three cups rhubarb. Chop those up.

Don’t those rhubarb just look beautiful?

So then you mix in 1 cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of flour. And if you’re me, you add 1 tablespoon of orange liquor for luck.

When you mix it all up it should look like a yummy sticky mess. You can put straight into a 9x13 pan.

Then you mix up the crumb toppling. You need two sticks of butter (which I did not actually have, so big thanks to Aaron for saving the day on that one). Then mix in a cup and a half of flour, a cup of brown sugar and a cup of oats.

It may be a bit hard to mix up the clumps, so give it your all. I had Victoria help.

Then spread the crumble on top.

And then cook at 375 for about 40 minutes. And it will look something like this:

Enjoy!

Spinach (and Sausage) Balls!

This weekend Aaron and I had a little party to go to with some of my coworkers. I decided to make my mom’s spinach ball recipe. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find her recipe, so I improvised with this one from All Recipes.com: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spinach-Balls/Detail.aspx

First, be sure to drain the spinach thoroughly.

Then you just add bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Since we knew some folks weren’t spinach fans, we also made some sausage balls too.

Basically the same idea here. We wanted to spice things up a bit so we did shallots with the sausage and onions and garlic with the spinach (instead of just garlic powder).

Don’t those shallots look gorgeous? Aaron also had the idea to add some extra sharp cheddar cheese to the mix  to give it more punch – and of course, more cheese is always a good idea.

Then we also mixed in the Italian spices, pepper, melted butter and egg.

Then you just form it into balls, just like you would with traditional meatballs.

Then you take the beauties and pop then in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350. Then they get all nice and crunchy like this…

We served ours with marina and tatziki sauce, which were awesome. My mom also serves hers with Chinese sweet and sour sauce. One warning about tatziki sauce – you probably will not be able to buy it at the regular grocery store. We finally found ours at a Greek restaurant, but I think eventually I want to try to make it myself.

So stay tuned for that adventure.

Mom’s Chicken Salad

My mom calls this recipe the fruity chicken salad. It is one of my absolute summer favorites. Pretty easy – no complex ingredients, but delicious.

My version tonight is more of a chicken-y fruit salad. I used our leftover grilled chicken but if you want it to be really good, you should use chicken breast. So… first you cut up your chicken and dump it in the bowl. Then add equal amounts of grapes and apples. Like this:

Then for the dressing just mix up enough mayonnaise to coat everything. For flavor we add about 1 teaspoon of curry and salt and pepper to taste. You should also add 1 teaspoon of horseradish sauce if you want some zest. I also threw in some celery seed instead of celery. Mom’s recipe calls for celery, but I’m not a big fan. Instead, I added pineapple. (Always a good substitute for celery.)

A note about the curry. Aaron HATES curry, but he doesn’t mind it in this dish. However, if you have a curry hater in your house you may want to add slightly less curry. So mix it up thusly.

My mom’s recipe suggests that you serve over lettuce and garnish with tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs, which would be awesome. But we didn’t have that, so we just used some romaine.

Enjoy! And happy early Mother’s day to our moms. We wish we could be there, but we’ll have to owe you a good meal for the next time you come to Boone.

Virginia’s Awesome Grilled Salad

So… You think of  grilled salad… it normally involves grilled meat of some sort on top of a salad. Not around here. Virginia has been making this awesome but simple salad…

You’ll need: Romaine Lettuce, Mozzarella Cheese, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar, plus some small tomatoes, maybe some garlic or onions if so inclined.

Get the lettuce nice and clean, then cut a head of Romaine in half. Meanwhile, let the oven preheat toward broil.

Brush the inside of each half with the Olive Oil then add your tomatoes, onion, garlic, peppers, and whatever else tickles your fancy…

Top it off with some sliced mozzarella, and toss in the oven on broil until the cheese melts and the lettuce gets a little browned and crispy in some spots.

After they come out of the oven, drizzle them with a little balsamic vinegar to taste and cut off the “stem”. That’s it. Simple. Easy. Wonderfully tasty. I’m quite willing to say it’d work equally as well with any of your favorite salad dressings… I’m thinking a nice Honey Mustard would kind of glaze and be nice and sticky…