Thursday 9 August 2012

Chicken and couscous "ready meal"

My sister had her second beautiful little girl last week and I went over to see her yesterday. I wanted to take a pre-made dinner to save them the hassle of cooking, as I know what it's like with a baby and toddler in the house! I had a lot of things to think of, it needed to be easy to finish off cooking, contain no onions or hot spices (she is breastfeeding and these don't seem to agree with new babies) and not need any ingredients that were not already in my fridge.

So, the answer came to me, chicken in a vegetable and tomato sauce with couscous.

Method

I skinned and chopped 3 large tomatoes and placed them in my big saute pan with a small tin of "chair de tomate", a splash of olive oil and 2 frozen cubes of garlic.
I simmered these together with about 150ml of chicken stock, black pepper and mild paprika.
I added 2 medium sized chopped carrots and half a bag of spinach and simmered until the sauce was quite thick.
In a frying pan I seared 2 chicken breasts and then placed them in a casserole dish and covered them with the tomato sauce. I then cooled it quickly in a bath of iced water and put it in the fridge.

I made up 200g couscous with chicken stock and 1 tbsp sunflower oil, then cooled this and put it in the fridge.

When I went over, I took the 2 dishes of food, all they had to do was microwave the couscous and cook the chicken for 30 minutes at 180c and they had a home cooked dinner. Easy.


2 comments:

  1. And I can confirm that it was delicious. Even our 'big girl' polished hers off. Not a grain of couscous left.

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  2. It sounds delicious as I love couscous. Lucky Francis & Mat xx

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