Apricot-Rosemary Chicken Thighs with Roasted Almond Couscous

When I left work this afternoon, I didn't think I'd be up to cooking tonight. All of us at the college are getting things ready for the Fall semester to begin next week, so when I came home, I was pretty whooped. However, since I said I'd get this made tonight, I decided I had better do it, and I'm glad I did. This is a really good meal, and it's not terribly hard at all, and making it revitalized me.

THE MEAL

I really enjoyed the texture of the couscous with the almonds, but by itself, it's too dry. However,by drizzling a little of that incredible sauce on it, it's outstanding! This sauce would make anything good. I can imagine it on pork, but on the chicken thighs, you can't beat it.

NEW THINGS

As I said when I started this project, I want to try new techniques and equipment with each new recipe. For this recipe, I had to bone a thigh, which really wasn't all that hard, but I couldn't get just thighs from the store. All they had were hind quarters.

It was no big deal to cut off the leg portion of the quarter, but it was sort of messy getting that portion of the back off. The end product didn't look too bad, but I don't think I'm going to get a job as a butcher any time soon. And I'm sure if my dad, who butchered tons of turkeys when we were on the farm would have wept if he saw how I handled the knife (by the way Dad, I did sharpen it, a bit). Except for the skin and fat, I'll use the rest of the hind quarters to make chicken soup.

The other new thing was that I used a grill pan for the first time. I really liked using it, but I suspect that it might be a pain trying to get the charred remains of chicken and sauce out from between the grooves. Despite those grooves, I'll definitely be using the grill pan again.

SCREW UPS

Also as promised, I'm going to confess to my screw ups. My first noticeable screw up is that I thought I had white wine vinegar...well I had red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar and rice vinegar and white vinegar and apple cider vinegar...At first I thought I'd just substitute white vinegar, but instead, I checked the internet for substitutes. The internet machine said to use rice vinegar, so I did. I have no idea if it would have made any difference, but it was so good, I don't care.

I don't know if you'll call this a screw up or not, but I don't have a vent above my stove. I have a couple of push-out windows in the corner. I really got that pan hot before I put the thighs in. I wanted to make sure it really seared the chicken. It did, but it also smoked up the place. It's a wonder the fire department didn't show up...but then, my neighbors are pretty used to seeing smoke pour out of my kitchen windows.

INGREDIENTS

I'm not going to reprint the whole recipe here. You can find it at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/apricot-rosemary-chicken-thighs-50400000136935/ However, I did want to say that I used my own homegrown flat leaf parsley and rosemary, and I used my own previously made chicken stock. I cook enough chicken that it's easy to whip up some chicken stock to freeze. Although this makes it sound like I'm a great gardener, I'm not. I just wish I was. I can grow things in pots, and now that I realize I'm lousy in the garden, I'll be doing a much better job with my pot garden...(that didn't sound right).

So all in all, I think this was a fun first recipe. I'm not sure what I'll do next, but I'm thinking I'll tackle something a little more complicated.