Moroccan Olive Chicken with Cous Cous, recipe courtesy of my brain

So sorry for the lag time, comrades. Family was in town, I baked a cake, and time escaped me. But now, the next post:

In a brief and infrequent moment of foresight, I put some frozen chicken breasts in the fridge to thaw while I was at work today. That way, when I got home in a semi-tizzy after 8 hours in that hell-on-earth known as retail, I would at least have the ingredients ready to create the master plan I had just started thinking up on the way home. The alternative is hacking the chicken breasts apart with a not-sharp-enough knife, and we all know where that leads…

My master plan goes a little something like this, while I’m stopping-and-going on I-40:

“Dinner, dinner, dinner… I know, chicken!…baked! To keep the moisture in, it needs a jacket of…. Citrus? I don’t have any… [brain blast!] OLIVES! With…rice.”

So, I put the mostly defrosted chicken into a glass pan that I had a top for. I lightly salted and peppered the chicken boobies, then covered with 4 tablespoons of sliced green olives. When you do this at home, I would rinse the olives a bit, the brine tended to make some bites of this meal a little too salty. I also chopped some red, yellow and orange sweet peppers for color, then put the top on the dish and baked at 350* for about 20 minutes. Mine took longer than expected because the meat was thicker in some places than others. In retrospect, I would butterfly the chicken or cut them in half lengthwise (hot dog style—anybody else remember that from elementary school?)

Getting ready to bake! Kalamata olives or capers would probably work well here, too, if you wanted to experiment with a Greek, lemon-olive-rosemary dish.

While the chicken was cooking, I pureed about 2 cups of cilantro leaves (be sure to rinse them) with olive oil and some pine nuts. Pine nuts are crazy expensive, but I (randomly) had some lying around my pantry, so I used them. If you don’t have any and don’t want to buy any, walnuts work just as well. So, I blended those ingredients to make a sort of cilantro pesto.

Making the cilantro pesto

Rinsing my cilantro. Disregard the blueberries, which I was eating while rinsing. On a side note, a blueberry with a cilantro leaf wrapped around it is a surprisingly refreshing snack. 

It was then that I realized I forgot to put on the rice, which we all know takes longer than you would think it does.

Quick thinking: cous cous! If you haven’t tried it, cous cous is da bomb diggity (can’t believe I just said that, wow, hello 1994). It’s a grain, a Moroccan staple, and literally cooks in 5 minutes. You just boil your water, add a bit of salt and some olive oil or butter, then add cous cous, remove from heat, cover, let sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork. While fluffing, I added some sun dried tomatoes, which made it really beautiful and even more colorful. And healthier, I suppose, if you’re going for that.

Time to plate! So, I put down some cous cous, then some pesto, then the chicken, spooned the olives, juices, and peppers on top, then a bit more pesto. I wanted this to be Food Network ready because the BrewMeister is such a Food Network junkie. I failed to mention, while I was making this he was—I kid you not—TAKING OUR FRONT DOOR OFF ITS HINGES and CUTTING RIGID PLASTIC WITH MY GOOD KITCHEN KNIVES. ShakeMyHead.

Men, I will never understand you, please explain yourselves. Thank you.