Moroccan Chicken with Honey-Sesame-Soy Carrot Coins

Ingredients at the start

I borrowed the book The Everything Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook from the library and decided that the Moroccan Chicken recipe looked good, mainly because it didn't require me to buy any ingredients!  I only made a couple changes -- less onion since my last recipe had too much onion, and dried ground ginger instead of fresh.  I know, fresh ginger is better tasting, easy to keep in the freezer, etc.  I love the flavor of ginger but I hate actually chomping down on fresh ginger, so I prefer to substitute.  I think I used about 1 teaspoon of ground ginger instead.

One interesting thing about this recipe is that it doesn't cook all day while you're at work since the chicken is cut into small pieces.  It cooks for only 5 hours, so I threw it together at lunch time.  I'm glad I saw the details of how long it cooks and what to do with the meat, I was ready to toss the whole chicken thighs into the slow cooker in the morning.

You add the chickpeas and apricots towards the end of cooking, so I prepared those at lunchtime as well.  I diced the apricots instead of cutting them in half since I figured they would disburse through the mixture more.  When Husband Jeff got home, he added the chickpeas and apricots in to warm up. 

When I got home I made couscous because it's an appropriate match for a Moroccan dish.  Couscous is great because it only takes five minutes to make after boiling the liquid. I added some instant chicken stock (Better Than Bouillon is good because you can make the exact amount you need),  chopped frozen spinach, dried lemon peel, and chopped almonds.

I also cut up some carrots into coins and tossed them in the microwave.  While the carrots cooked, I made more honey-sesame-soy sauce (the same sauce I made for the sesame-ginger salmon the other day). 

Verdict

The chicken dish was tasty, but not really the prettiest thing.  Next time I would use chicken stock for the liquid instead of water and add some cornstarch because the "sauce" was thin.  And this was my first time using boneless, skinless chicken thighs, and they're great.  Tasty with no mess of trying to deal with the bones or skin.  Sonny D liked the chicken, but had too many snacks earlier in the day to eat anything other than his grapes. 

The couscous and the carrots were perfect, can't wait to try them again.  Husband Jeff wants me to make up a batch of the honey-sesame-soy sauce to keep in the fridge to add to lots of dishes.  I think it would be great on peanut butter toast, an excellent balance of salty and sweet.