Barbecued Chicken with a Mustard Glaze and Curried Couscous Salad

You may have noticed that I cook a positively absurd amount of chicken, rice, and potatoes. Well, there is actually a reason for that. You see, I was a vegetarian for about 10 years. I was even a vegan for a couple of those 10 years, so I am very attached to vegetarian food. I love grains, vegetables, soy protein, etc. Several years ago, I went back to eating poultry once in a blue moon, but I haven't really gone any further. In fact, for a very long time, I wouldn't even eat poultry at home. I would reserve it for special occasions, when we would go out to dinner. As Kevin and I decided to start this blog, though, I agreed to start eating chicken at home. This is actually a big deal for me, so I am proud to be tasting the food I cook at home.

Kevin, on the other hand, is almost dairy free. He despises cheese, milk, butter, and cream, which definitely limits our mealtime goodies. If I can hide dairy in whatever I am cooking, it's fine, but there is no way to mask cheese. I've tried. He can tell. Anyway, I have gotten very creative in my cooking, but we are still somewhat limited. Hence, the chicken, the grains, and the potatoes.

Anyway, last night's dinner was thrown together very quickly, though, when I planned it, I assumed it was going to take forever to put together. The Barbecued Chicken came from a Cooking Light recipe. I have made it before, but not since coming into the possession of a grill pan. I really liked the flavor of the chicken, and it stayed juicy, and retained the flavor of the sauce. The Curried Couscous was a recipe from Ina Garten (a.k.a The Barefoot Contessa). My friend, Katie, made this recipe for book club once, and I loved it, so I decided to give it a try. The recipe calls for red onion and currants, neither of which I had on hand. I wanted to use raisins, but Kevin gave me the head-shake on that idea. I think it would have so much better with those 2 additions, because it would have added another dimension to the dish. It had a nice flavor - in fact, I really liked it, but there was something missing (um, perhaps onions and currants?). I would make this again - the right way. All in all, this was an easy meal, with a good, solid flavor, and it used a lot of things that I had on hand in the kitchen.





The Critique
Loved the chicken - very juicy, tasty well cooked and just overall great. 4 bowls



Cous cous - not the biggest fan of slightly warmed food. It was a little strange because the carrots were raw but the cous cous was cooked and it gave the entire meal a luke warm temperature. It kind of reminded me of food that was sitting in your car on a hot day that wasn't supposed to be warm. However, the next day, I reheated it (actually Marji reheated it for me) and fully warmed with the chicken cut up into pieces, it tasted delicious. 3 bowls.