Roasted Garlic Chicken with Couscous

It’s been a while since I posted a savory dish but I had to share this dish.  I first saw it when watching The Food Network, The Best Thing I Ever Made.  Anne Burrell made the inspiring dish and you can find her recipe here.

Fast forward to this week and I wanted to try it.  But if you are like me you loosely follow the recipe and alter for your tastes.  That’s what I did and I gotta say, thank goodness as this is so delicious.  A couple of the reviews said the dish took to long and there wasn’t much flavour, so I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.  Since I’m probably the only one who will eat this in our family and I’m ok with that

Here’s what you’ll need:

• whole chicken cut up into parts
• 2 bulbs of roasted garlic
• One lemon – zest and juice
• 2 tsp thyme
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• red pepper flakes (amount depends on how hot you like it)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 cups Israeli couscous
• 1 large zucchini cut up
• 1/2 onion cut up
• 2 celery stalks cup up
• 3 tbsp tomato paste with basil
• pinch of saffron
• 1 cup good white wine (if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it)
• 3 cups low sodium chicken stock
• salt and pepper to taste

Marinate chicken:

1. Roast garlic in oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Remove and let cool
2. In bowl combine lemon, zest, thyme, cumin, salt, pepper flakes, oil.
3. Mash up garlic and put into marinade.
4. Rub all over chicken pieces and let sit at least one hour.

Make couscous:

1. Bring water in saucepan to boil and cook couscous for 5 minutes.  Drain and set aside.

Make Chicken:

1. In a large saucepan, saute chicken in olive oil until crispy brown on all sides.  Remove from heat and set aside.
2. Drain the fat but try to leave as much of the garlic in the pan as possible.
3. Return pan to heat and saute the onions and celery until soft (3-4 minutes). Take all the remaining marinade left in original dish and add to saute pan. This really bumps up the flavour.
4. Deglaze pan with wine and let simmer another 3-4 minutes.
5. Add tomato paste, saffron, zucchini, couscous and chicken stock.
6. Return the couscous to a deep baking dish and nestle the chicken (skin side up) into the couscous.
7. Bake at 375 covered in foil for 30 minutes.  Remove foil and continue cooking for 20 minutes.  When chicken temp hits 165, you are done!
8. Let sit 10 minutes and then serve!
9. Enjoy

Ok, so I made this mid-day and was going to eat for dinner but couldn’t wait and had the plate in the pictures as a snack (hangs head but it was really really good).

So savory dishes might be making an occasional comeback for a little while as I try to get back to menu planning and eating right. I hope you don’t mind.

Thanks for looking!