So usually I don't make full meals with sides, and just throw whatever I have in the fridge together. This meal is a bit different because I was cooking for two! I put my new cooking skills to use and made this meal for my wonderful boyfriend for date night on Saturday :) He's a meat eater so I compromised by cooking chicken. My mom makes a wonderful grilled marinaded chicken so I tweaked her recipe. I marinated it with greek dressing, a dash of red wine vinegar, and 1/2 a tablespoon of crushed garlic, to give it a Mediterranean flavor profile (see below). I prepared it in the morning and let it sit in the fridge all day so the flavors were absorbed into the chicken .Then we grilled it on Hello Kitty (My roommate has a mini grill with hello kitty on it). And when I say "we" grilled it, my boyfriend actually did that part. He's a cook as well, and he grilled the chicken to perfection!
Because I was doing a greek marinate I made my Israeli Couscous as a side dish (see below). I've done a previous post on this recipe, so I won't go into details here. My boyfriend had never had couscous before and he liked it, so I considered it a success. I usually serve it cold and did so with this dinner, but he suggested serving it warm. I'll be trying that next time. The last element of the meal was green beans. I got a pre-washed bag at Trader Joe's and just cooked them in the microwave. To make the green beans special I mixed them with honey roasted almond slices. I love eating green beans with almonds, the sweetness of the almonds really makes the flavor of the beans pop. It ended up actually being a fairly easy to make meal. The most difficult part was making sure everything was ready and hot at the same time. We actually nailed that part, and everything was delicious. I think we both agreed that the meal was a success!
Thoughts on this Meal:
- When I decided to cook for him, I found myself constructing an entire meal instead of one dish, which was new for me. Thinking about each element of the meal was a new exercise. I tried to pick sides that would compliment the chicken and have a Mediterraneanesque flavor profile. I actually really liked trying to contract a meal that was well balanced. Both flavor wise and food group wise
- As I mentioned before the hardest part of this meal was trying finish at the same time. I think it's something that gets easier with experience.
- Cooking with someone else is a completely different experience! I really liked being able to talk about what I was doing and have someone else contribute to the experience. Especially if it gets I mean to spend more time with my bf :)
Also I made pumpkin pie for dessert. Which I will post separately about next.
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