Cooking: "Tandoori" Chicken w/ CousCous Salad

Tonight Justyn and I both cooked something. I gave him rough directions on how to make the marinade for the chicken. He combined some yogurt with a cumin & coriander blend, paprika, curry powder, honey, salt & pepper. He was a little skeptical on how it would turn out so I made him try it before he added the chicken. It tasted a little off but I was sure that as the flavors came together and eventually cooked on the grill, that it would be good.



I stuck with what I knew well for a side dish which was a couscous salad. I played around with the proportions on certain ingrediants to improve the flavor and sauteed the red onion to get rid of the overwhelming flavor so that you would be able to taste the other ingrediants in the salad. It turned out very well. I think, to date, this is the best version so far.



The chicken didn't take long to cook on the grill. It turned out surprisingly good. We used chicken breast instead of chicken thighs which is what the recipe called for and the meat was pretty juicy and tender. I think the yogurt marinade helped a lot. I hesitate to call our recipe a Tandoori chicken because it's such a bastardization I have to put it in quotes. A tasty bastardization though.



Here's the revised recipe for the couscous salad.

CousCous Salad

1 cucumber seeded and diced
4 roma tomatoes diced
1 red bell pepper diced
1 red onion finely diced
2 large cloves of garlic grated
2 juicy lemons juiced
handful of mint chopped
handful of Italian parsley chopped
1 box of plain couscous
1 can of low sodium fat free chicken broth
1 container of feta cheese
2 tbsp dijon mustard
4 tbsp honey
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbsp butter

In a large bowl combine cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, mint, parsley and feta cheese.

In a pan, saute red onion until semi translucent. You can also add the onion in raw but it'll overwhelm the other flavors in the salad. Set the onions aside to cool.

In a pot, cook couscous with chicken broth and 1 tbsp of butter. The directions to cook couscous are on the box. Set couscous aside to cool.

In a bowl, add garlic, lemon juice, dijon mustard and honey and mix to combine. Whisk olive oil into the mixture. This will be your dressing. Season with salt & pepper to taste. You might need to add something more depending on what you like.

Add onions & couscous to the veggies & cheese and mix to combine. Add dressing and mix to combine.