North African Chicken and Vegetables with Couscous

First of all, let me explain my extended absence. We just moved and blogging kind of became a low priority for a while. Plus, we still don't have internet at home. Plus, I have a real job so I don't do much cooking anymore. In fact, I didn't even make this meal. My brother's wife, Melissa had us over for dinner and cooked this delish dish which she got out of a cookbook from a series that I love. It was so good that I decided to snap a picture and have a guest chef.
The series is called "Quick From Scratch" and this recipe is in the chicken book. The series is good because the recipes are relatively easy to execute and the ingredients are accessible, but they feel a little upscale and all the ones I've tried are tasty.

So here's the recipe:

1 tbsp. Olive Oil
3 chicken breasts, cut in half
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 onion chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped
1/2 tsp. paprika
3/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. cayenne
1/4 tsp. ground turmeric
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
1 cup canned garbanzo beans
1 zucchini, sliced

Season the chicken with a little salt and brown them in the olive oil. Add the onion and cook it until it's translucent. Add the spices, then everything else and simmer it for 15 minutes.

serve it over 4 cups of prepared couscous (a pasta from Morocco that is SO fast and easy to cook--follow the directions on the box) and sprinkle on some chopped parsley and some fresh lemon juice.

If you want to do it vegetarian, I think it would be great to add extra garbanzo beans, leave out the chicken, and use veggie broth instead of chicken.

Chicken Cacciatore

Cacciatore (catch-a-torry) means "hunters" and the dish has a sort of hearty, woodsy flavor from the mushrooms, wine and rosemary. This dish is quite easy to execute and can be made mostly from ingredients you ought to have in your pantry/fridge/freezer (except for the fresh rosemary, but you should plant some in your yard because it beautiful, tasty, useful, and extremely hardy--tolerating heat and cold very well).
Cooking time is over an hour, but for most of that time, it just sits on the stove, requiring no attention. This recipe should be enough to feed 10 people. You could cut it in half, or freeze part of it for a smaller group.

Dredge 3-3.5 lbs. of boneless/skinless chicken thighs and fry in batches until golden in a few tbsp. of olive oil in a large dutch oven or skillet (This step is a little tedious and a tad messy, so skip it if it's going to prevent you from making the dish, but it will improve the flavor and texture).
Slice one half pound of thick sliced bacon into little strips and fry it in a pan until it's thoroughly cooked but not crispy and drain the oil.
Chop one yellow onion, 2 carrots and 2 stalks of celery and sautee them in a large dutch oven or heavy pot on moderately high heat until the veggies start to get some color from the heat.
Squish the tomatoes from two 2 28 oz. cans in your hands (be careful--they'll explode onto your walls) and add them along with their juice to the pot.
Add 1 1/2 cups of red wine and 2 cups of chicken broth, then place the chicken thighs back in (or add them raw if you didn't brown them).
Slice 2 portobella mushrooms (cut them in half, then slice them) and about 10 white mushrooms and add them to the pot.
Add 1 tbsp. each of dried oregano and chopped, fresh rosemary along with a pinch or more of crushed red pepper flakes, 5 0r 6 cloves of minced garlic, the cooked bacon, and some black pepper.
Let it all simmer for about an hour and boil 2 lbs. of pasta in salted water when it's almost time to eat. I think linguine is best. while the pasta is cooking, use a wooden spoon to gently break up the chicken thighs a little bit, then at the last minute, stir in 1/2 cup of fresh, chopped parsley. Serve it over the pasta.

Chicken Tostadas

This recipe is really more for the chicken than the tostadas. It's a really simple, healthy way to cook chicken and you could use it for tacos, enchiladas, burritos, or whatever.
I like to make a big batch and save the left over chicken for other meals later.
Just put a few chicken breats (3-5) in a large pot with a bottle of salsa verde and a couple of chicken bouillion cubes. Simmer it on low heat for an hour or so, then shred the chicken by holding a breast with one fork and pulling shreds of meat off with another fork.
You can find salsa verde in the Mexican section of any grocery store--I use Herdez brand. Salsa Verde is made mostly from tomatillos, which look like little green tomatoes with a papery husk.

To make the tostadas, you can either use premade shells that you'll find near the tortillas, or you can fry your own. Making your own is easy and they are so good when they're hot and crispy. Just fry corn tortillas one at a time in about one inch of hot oil. Keep them in the oil until they're crispy in the middle--when they're done, they'll pretty much stop bubbling.
Load up the fried shells with refried beans, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, hot sauce and whatever else.

Chicken Soup

Home made chicken soup is divine and can be easy if you take some shortcuts. Of course it's very gratifying and supremely tasty to make your own chicken broth from scratch, but you can also buy some good pre-made stocks at the grocery store.

To make the broth from scratch, start with a roasted chicken (buy one at Costco, or do it yourself). Pull all the meat off and put it in the fridge until the stock is ready. Put the carcass (I know that sounds gross, but let's call a spade a spade people) in a pot with a chopped onion, a chopped carrot, and a chopped stalk of celery. Cover the bones and veggies with water and let it sit at a light boil for 1-2 hours. Strain it, saving the broth and pitching the rest of it, and put the broth into the fridge. Once it cools, scrape the fat off the top.

To make the soup, put 1 quart of broth in a pot with one stalk of celery and one carrot, both chopped. Boil the veggies until they're as soft as you like them, then add some chopped, cooked chicken (probably somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup) and about 1/2 a pound of fresh fettucine cut into little strips (the stuff you can buy in the refrigerator section near the cheese is tasty).
Cook the pasta according to the direction on the package, and add the juice of 1/2 of a fresh lemon (I love adding lemon to chicken soup. Even if you use Campbell's, you should try the lemon). If you made your own broth, you'll have to add some salt to taste.

Farfalle with Tomatoes and Basil

This one is sooo much tastier and healthier than mac-n-cheese but takes hardly any extra time or effort. I promise, you can even ask Anne. Sometimes we make it with chicken and sometimes without. Anne says she like it just as well without--I think I agree.
The amounts I have here are for four adult servings:
Cook 1/2 lb. of farfalle (bowties) according to the package instructions. Make sure you generously salt the water. If the package says "10-12 minutes" cook them for 10. By the time everything's finished, they'll be perfect.
While the pasta is cooking,
in a large saucepan or dutch oven, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan,
then add:
1/2 onion--chopped finely
once the onion is soft and translucent, add
6 roma tomatoes, diced (I almost always cook with romas becasue they're easy to cut and usually the cheapest)
Cook the onions and tomatoes on medium-high heat until the tomato pieces have turned into sauce. You want to cook out a lot of the water.
Your pasta probably needs to be drained sometime in here, but scoop out a mug full of the pasta water before you drain it. I'll explain later.
Add about 1 tsp. of salt (make sure to taste it because seasoning is personal), 2 tsp. of sugar, some black pepper, and some red pepper flakes if you like a little spice.
Dump the pasta into the sauce and stir in 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese, 8-10 chopped basil leaves, and 1 chopped, grilled chicken breast or leftover chopped up chicken (if you want it).
Now is when you use the reserved pasta water to control the texture. I'm sure that sometimes you've cooked, or been served pasta that is dry and stuck together and just not perfect. Well, you can avoid that with the addition of a little pasta water. It works best becasue it's salted so it won't dilute the sauce, it's hot, so it won't make the dish cold, and it has some starch that the pasta abandoned during cooking so it won't make the sauce too thin.
Add a little water and stir it in until the pasta is covered in perfectly textured, shiny sauce.
Do it again when you come back for a second serving and the pasta looks all dried out.
Also, whenever you're reheating pasta, add a little water before putting it into the microwave.