Day 13- Chicken and Chickpea Stew

Wow, day 13! You've probably noticed that my posts have been a little bit lacking. I'm getting tired! 15 straight days of planning, shopping, cooking and documenting seems completely reasonable before you've started, but wow am I ready for a break!

But that's part of the challenge, I suppose. Plowing through and making it happen one dish at a time. I've now got a whole new appreciation for all of you usual food bloggers out there!

Anyways, to the dinner at hand. Even though I did a chicken and chickpea dish last week, I couldn't help but try this Chicken and Chickpea Stew recipe from SELF Magazine via Epicurious.

Coming from SELF magazine you know it's going to be healthy. Just look at those lovely ingredients! The only thing I didn't have was whole wheat couscous. You can buy it here, but my husband doesn't have it in his shop and I didn't feel like a trip to the grocery store.

The recipe also calls for boneless chicken breasts, but I decided to use some chicken that we had in the freezer. So, I cooked them in some olive oil for a few minutes on each side. Then I removed the chicken and added the onions, garlic and spices (sorry, no photo). These cooked for a while and then I added the chicken back in along with the rest of the ingredients.

Chickpeas, tomatoes and zucchini make this a very colorful dish! This is very close to the 7 vegetable couscous that we eat almost every week here in Morocco. This is just cooked for less time and is missing some of the veggies.

To my husbands dismay, I even cooked the couscous per the instructions in the recipe- instantly! Even though a most of the couscous here is instant, a majority of Moroccan ladies still slave over theirs for at least 3 hours every Friday. 

Put the chicken and sauce on the couscous and you're done! Here I've served it the Moroccan way. In the recipe the couscous is eaten on the side. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.

The verdict: This was solidly good, but not fantastic. It got really excellent reviews on Epicurious, but I'm guessing it's because most of those people haven't had traditional Moroccan couscous ;-) Prepared this way it was easy, quick and healthy. What more can you ask for? 

Tomorrow I'm 98% sure that I'll be making Martha Stewart's Macaroni and Cheese. There's no photo with this recipe, but I'm sure you all know what this stuff looks like. Reviews claim that this is the BEST MACARONI AND CHEESE EVER! We'll see if that's true.