In my other life, I am a theatre teacher. For the past three years, I have been charged with creating a theatre program at a pretty groovy little school outside of Memphis, and, over those three years, my students have worked their booties off to create something wonderful. We have tackled classic American plays, Shakespeare, narrative theatre, musicals, and have even generated a couple of original scripts developed through ethnographic studies and interviews. Not too shabby for a program with roughly twelve extremely active participants and no formal performance space.
Perhaps our crowning achievement was when we received an invitation to take a show to the American High School Theatre Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Yea, us!
Now, I have to pick a show suitable for young actors with little or no set that can travel across the pond to the world's largest theatre festival and raise an obscene amount of money to do so. This summer should be dedicated to pouring over scripts, devising fund-raising possibilities, and working with designers to have everything ready to go.
Instead, I went to the grocery store.
If you have any ideas about which play I should take, I would love to hear them!
This marinade made me soooo happy! The chicken is beyond juicy and flavorful. This made eight skewers, plus two that were just with the veggies.
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup plain yogurt
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup fresh mint
2 Tbl fresh rosemary
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
Veggies, sliced into sturdy wedges
zucchini
yellow and orange peppers
fennel
red onion
Combine yogurt, garlic, herbs, lemon, oil, salt and pepper in a bowl and set aside. Cut chicken breasts into 1 1/2" cubes and place in marinade. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
Soak skewers in water to prevent burning. While skewers get waterlogged, slice veggies into wedges and create an assembly line. Once you start skewerin' the chicken it gets a little messy. Assemble skewers alternating chicken and veggies (about three pieces of each per skewer).
Preheat grill pan over medium heat and turn on the fan. It's gonna get smoky in here! Place skewers on grill and char those suckers. About 5 minutes on each side. Transfer to a baking sheet and finish cooking in a 350 oven for about ten minutes. Serve over Minted Eggplant Couscous.
If you have extra veggies, make a couple of skewers with them. Just drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Delish!
Minted Eggplant Couscous
This is a great dish to bring as a side for summer get-togethers, and it gets better the longer it sits. More than likely you will use less vinegar. I don't really measure out each ingredient, so start with a couple of shakes and add until it tastes good to your pie hole.
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups couscous
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 small eggplant, grilled and marinated with mint
1/2 cup dried apricots, diced
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup pistachios
1 red pepper, chopped
3 carrots, diced
7 green onions, diced
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
a ton of fresh parsley, chopped
2 Tbl fresh mint, chopped
Salt/pepper to taste
Grill and marinate the eggplant as we talked about in an earlier post, except this time use mint as your herb and forget about the capers. Let sit for a couple of hours so flavors can combine.
In a medium sauce pan, bring stock and garlic to a boil. Stir in couscous, cover, and remove from heat. This will be done in five minutes!
While the couscous is couscousing, chop your veggies and apricots into bite sized pieces and drain the garbanzos.
Using a fork, fluff the couscous and transfer to a large bowl. Add in veggies, pistachios, apricots, currants, and herbs. Dress with lemon, vinegar and olive oil. Toss to combine. Salt and pepper to taste.
scott I love your food blog...I made yogurt marinated chicken (in the oven) from an old Gourmet cook book it is the best way to make chicken...but what i really need is a recipe for fava beans that does not make them taste like a**
ReplyDeleteDaniel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the love. Unfortunately, fava beans will always taste like a$$. It's like chewing on little sponges that soak up any moisture in your mouth.
If anyone can send me a recipe proving me wrong, I'll give you a hug.
Congrats to you and your students! I makes perfect sense to go shopping and cook - good theater and good cooking both require creativity. Good luck with fund raising. Have you considered looking into grants?
ReplyDelete