Moroccan Chicken with Apricots and Almonds

I adapted the recipe from this site: http://moroccanfood.about.com/od/beeflambandgoatrecipes/r/tagine_apricots.htm.

Basically I stuck to all the ingredients (except for using chicken breasts instead of beef or lamb), but tried to imitate the tagine by using my crock-pot. So, basically, I sliced 1 onion, put it in the crock-pot, then threw in my chicken (I did cut it into big chunks and I used 4 breasts. 5 would be fine, too!), then some finely chopped onion, garlic, the oils, 21/2 cups of water, cilantro, all the spices except for the honey, cinnamon, almonds and apricots. I set my crock-pot to high, covered the whole thing, and 2.5 hours later I added the cinnamon, apricots, almonds and honey. I think the only thing I would have done differently is maybe use a little less water (maybe just 2 cups) or let it cook without the lid, so it boils down more. Oh, and I added some cardamon to the whole thing (maybe 1 teaspoon). Anyway, basically, I just threw everything in the crock-pot at once, and added the apricots and nuts half way into it. The result? A super-delicious, richly flavorful and easy meal. Henry wanted to bathe in it. And I ate way too much as well. Sophia liked it, too.

I added couscous as a side dish. Aldi happened to sell it this week, so I had a pre-flavored, ready-in-5-minutes side to go with this. We used garlic and olive oil flavored couscous. I'm sure you can find something like that anywhere, and I highly recommend it as a side. Rice would work, too but it's just not quite as authentic (or flavorful in this case). You can also just buy normal couscous and boil it in whatever broth you like (I'd recommend veggie broth).

Biryani and a Book

I've been reading 'Stone Into Schools' by Greg Mortensen, and when I saw this recipe for this Afghani biryani, I knew it'd be the perfect meal to go along with my book. If you haven't read this book yet, you really should. It's very insightful and deeply touching on top of it all. You'll walk away with a better understanding of the circumstances and culture in Afghanistan/Pakistan and a greater appreciation for the people out there. Awesome book. And, the meal was awesome, too. And not even that hard to make. I wish I would have had time to maybe make a little side salad or something. I think that would have made it truly perfect, but at any rate, this will be a perfect meal for a coolish fall day, in my opinion. Give it a try!

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoons of oil
1 yellow onion - chopped
2 cups of chicken/beef/lamb - cubed (I used chicken)
2 cups of water
1 tsp of salt
11/2 tsp of cumin
11/2 tsp of cinnamon
11/2 tsp of cardamom (if you don't know what this is, you should get it - it's the bestest spice in the world and it will go with any dish that calls for cinnamon, and make that dish that much better)

3-4 carrots thinly sliced
1 cup of raisins
1/4 cup of oil
1 tsp of sugar
2 cups of basmati rice

Directions:

1. Sautee onions in oil until fairly dark. Add the cubed chicken and brown lightly. Then add the water, salt and spices to that. Give it a good stir, and then cover it and let it simmer until the chicken is nice and tender ( I let it cook for about 30 minutes).
2. Heat up your 1/4 cup of oil and then fry the carrots in it, together with the sugar until lightly browned/kind of tender. Remove the carrots, and put in the raisins. Sautee them until they swell a bit, and then add them to the carrots.
3. Check on your chicken. If it's done, remove the chicken/drain it, but save the juice!
4. Boil the rice in the juice you saved. I did this in a rice cooker, and just made sure I added enough juice to match the liquid I needed for 2 cups of rice (I ended up not having enough juice and adding some water, which the recipe calls for anyway). Once the rice is done mix it up with your meat, carrots and raisins.
5. Put your whole mix into a baking dish. Cover it with foil and bake it for 30-60 minutes at 345 degrees. You may want to add a little more water to the baking dish so nothing dries out.

Optional: I added cashews to my mix before I baked it, which fit really nicely with the whole dish.