Rocking the Casbah with skillet! Chicken & Broccoli!

My room-mate's hungry! Working on projects... can't stop. Oh right... it's 7:30 P.M. probably time to eat. She gets out a box of cereal that from a company called Casbah, rocking an East Indian grain. Imported from USA to Delta BC, not too exotic by that point.

Okay, if it's about the The Clash, I'm game! Despite having never cooked couscous, the fact I've only had it in Greek salad a few times. Being a rice-like grain, couscous is the Eastern answer to oatmeal. I wonder if it goes in cookies ^_^ will experiment later.

Since you can have it with figs, almonds, dates, allspice, and cinnamon, that to me is breakfast. We found a recipe online for throwing it in with chicken and broccoli. Don't know if it's traditionally Indian, but the fun word skillet made me un-manly giggle. The fact that it takes FIVE minutes to cook on it's no-brainer to cook-up was a winning combo in a solid stick to your ribs kind of way, even icky four food group, definitely healthy with a glass of milk. Frying chicken included, fifteen minutes later, supper's ready for two hungry people.

Here goes with modification from about.com/homecooking recipe which missed a few details...

Rockin' Casbah Skillet Chicken & Broccoli with Couscous

1 tsp olive oil
2 chicken boobs, pre-cooked
2 cu water (or more...)
1.5 cu broccoli
2/3 cu couscous!
Pinch-me of salt
4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp of lemon juice


Cutting board, big knife, skillet and good to go.

Take chicken and defrost, chop into cubes, dash of olive oil 5 minutes cooked at medium low, no pink!
Throw in first cup of water, minced up garlic, broccoli and cover for 5 minutes.

Dump in Couscous with splash of water -- more as needed as Couscous just sucked up the water so fast.
Cooking the Couscous reminded me so much of oatmeal cooking that it was just awesomely easy.
It boiled happily away and was done in about another 5 minutes.

So there's something new to throw together that is way more healthy than Kraft-dinner for a student meal.

Only it takes a bit more attention than KD because an iron skillet's only flaw is scorching stuff real quick if you don't push stuff around. Even heat displacement and retention out-weigh that with added bonus of near zero clean-up. Scrape stuff off and scrub with water, NO SOAP and dry right away done. Yes I can be lazy when it comes to cooking so it's something to get over and done with right away and not forgotten.

</end rant> I heart my skillet for another quick win in the kitchen.

FYI on the history behind the song, the Casbah is Arabian for citadel and specifically the Algerian fortress and mosque that was the main safe haven of the National Liberation Front when they were freedom fighting aka terrorism against the French as pressure for independence. Considering it is a hugely populated city, 40-70,000 estimated now live there, a good portion of it slums, and probably not much different 50 years ago from 1954-62, one long battle... now a falling apart UN heritage site with once gorgeous 17th century mosques.

As a revolutionary statement, Rock the Casbah written by the Clash in protest of Algerian neighbour's Iran when they outlawed dance music, crazy disco beats.... The Clash probably weren't thrilled as punks when their hit single became the unofficial US military theme song during 1st Gulf War. First song to play as troops were kicking it into Operation Desert Shield, aka invading Iraq long ago it seems now.



So there you have it, just from making supper, I learned something new. Yay... It don't look super colourful, but my brave room-mate and I devoured it quickly enough.