Cooking: Cous Cous Salad & Chicken Kebobs

I was stumped. To be creative or not to be.. that is the question. I had recently read on amateurgourmet.com that he had invented a new recipe (Mimosa Braised Chicken). He was originally going to make orange soda chicken, but after much thought, he decided against it. I might try his recipe out sometime.

So, after being inspired by his creativity, I decided to try my hand at it as well. AND it ended up being a last minute idea. I thought about dinner after lunch and couldn't come up with anything. OK, so all of it might not be originally my idea since Justyn had been wanting to try this recipe out first. I stole it.

Justyn had this idea about making a cous cous salad which is basically cous cous mixed with Greek style salad. Since we had to go to Albertson's and after knowing they didn't have a good premixed Greek salad I made up my own. Let's see... the usual components that go into my favorite Greek salad are red bell peppers, tomatoes, feta cheese, red (I agree with Rachel Ray, they should be called purple onions) onions, some kind of lettuce (I used Romaine). The dressing for my salad would be the marinade I used for the asparagus (in my March 14th post).

Justyn was carrying the basket and by the time I was done gathering all the produce he said "Good God, do you need this much? It's a lot of vegetables!"

I said "You wanted salad right? I'm going all out!" (or something like that)

We got some pre-marinated chicken (lemon herb) from the meat section, grabbed the cheese and cous cous and checked out.

I prepped all the vegetation for the salad, cut the chicken in cubes and skewered them with some red onion and then cooked the cous cous with double the amount of butter (everthing's better with butter!). For the dressing, you just need to throw in the zest of one lemon, juice of two lemons, 1.5 tbsp of honey, chopped shallot, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Once the cous cous was done, I transferred it to a large tupperware and added the tomato, chopped red onion and bell pepper. I mixed that around until it was combined and added the feta cheese and lettuce. I mixed that until it was combined and then dressed it lightly with the dressing I had made. Easy peasy... In the meantime, Justyn cooked the chicken skewers.

Here's how it turned out. Justyn really liked it, although I thought the onion flavor was too overpowering. I had shallot in the dressing, salad & skewers. Next time I'll omit the shallot from the dressing and maybe saute the red onion for the salad first. For my first time being somewhat inventive, I was happy, but my mouth still tastes faintly of onion. Blech! Happy cooking everyone!