Thai inspired chicken

There are some ingredients which bring a lot of joy in my meals and one of those ingredients is lemongrass! I absolutely love lemongrass, from my morning tea to my curries I use it abundantly and since I have moved to Singapore I can find it in almost every supermarket, hallelujah! 🙂 There is something really satisfying when you are cooking with fresh ingredients, in Tokyo it used to be a bit of a challenge to find them. I wasn’t very happy with my move to Singapore but the biggest jolly of being here is finding all these exotic ingredients everywhere. 🙂

So a few days ago I made this delicious and simple lemongrass, chilli and coriander marinated chicken and I served it saffron, sun dried tomato couscous, a total fusion combination, isn’t it? It took me only 20 minutes to make this dinner and it was a very healthy one too. You can replace the couscous with quinoa to make it gluten free.  I served this dish with Chianti Classico Raccolto 2013, went really well with it!

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken fillets flatten
• 2 or to taste green chillies
• 2 tbsp fresh coriander finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tsp lemongrass grated
• 1 tsp lime juice
• Black pepper and salt to taste
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 cup couscous
• 1 small red onion finely chopped
• 1 cup water
• A pinch saffron
• 3-4 sun dried tomatoes diced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Salt to taste

Directions:

Make a fine paste of lemongrass, chilli, coriander and lime juice using pestle mortar. Marinate the chicken in this paste, sprinkle salt and pepper.

In a bowl, place couscous, salt, saffron and olive oil. Pour boiling water and cover the bowl for 10 minutes. Fork the couscous, add the onions and sun dried tomatoes.

Heat oil in a pan add chicken fillets, press them down for a few minutes and flip them over. Cook for 5 minutes or till the chicken is cooked.

Serve it over couscous and garnish with coriander.