Tuesday and Thursday night are my running nights, and on an evening like tonight with some surprise sunshine and clear sky it was beautiful. I always come home feeling fitter and hungry! But with not so much time to cook it has to be something quick and easy but at the same time as I’m feeling so good for exercising something healthy. Tonight it was a joint effort and we had Moroccan Chicken Tagine.

I have to admit we did cheat and had an Al’féz kit but it tasted good, I often learn how to cook a meal from scratch by reading the ingredients. Some kits and packs can be an easy base for a tasty meal when you add a few sneaky ingredients of your own, as also commented by Helen Best-Shaw in her latest article Your Store Cupboard Essentials.

Anyway back to my dinner, this is how we prepared it (with a few slight variations from the instructions).

Firsty we chopped 3 chicken breasts into slices and fried in our wok with a little sunflower oil, while cutting half a green, yellow and red pepper into strips. These were then added to the chicken, stir-fried slightly before adding the spice mix¹

After stirring for about 30 seconds we added the sauce sachet², a tin of tomatoes, lemon juice and a splash of red wine. Mixed together, lowered the heat and then left to simmer for about 20 minutes.

Then it was just a matter of preparing the apricot spiced couscous and serving. Not forgetting to add a knob of butter to the couscous.

Next time I’ll be making it from scratch and I’m sure it’ll taste even better as of course these types of mixes and sauces always include salt and sugar which can usually be left out or moderated as well as preservatives and colouring which you wouldn’t add. So I’ll let you know how it turns out.

¹Spice mix main ingredients included turmeric, garlic, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mustard seed, cardamom, cayenne pepper

²Sauce mix main ingredients included tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, paprika, coriander, garlic, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, dates, onion, olives