When I first moved out of my mom’s house and came to Virginia for graduate school, I went to a terrible big-box appliance store called BrandsMart USA and bought myself a toaster and a slow cooker. These seemed like two staple items that any person living on their own should have, so I braved the garish signs and loud TVs that played in seemingly every corner of the store; I braced myself for the sensory overload that is BrandsMart USA in the interest of low prices, and I bought my little toaster and very basic, small slow cooker.
The first dish I tried in my slow cooker was orange chicken. I came home after the chicken had been cooking for about six hours to find a pot full of burnt, black char. The sugar (probably honey) from the orange chicken had burned, and the chicken was barely recognizable. I threw the mess in the trash can and never used that “slow” cooker again.
My bowl of Moroccan chicken, garnished with cilantro. Up close and Instagrammed.
But recently, I’ve fallen back in love with the slow cooker, and thanks to a cookbook that Amanda owns, Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook, I have found a few full-proof slow cooking recipes that I really like. We made this one a couple months ago, and yesterday, I made it again for dinner. This dish, Moroccan Chicken Thighs with Chickpeas and Cumin, incorporates a few of my favorite things: cumin (the smell! the taste!), bell pepper (calls for red, but I used yellow yesterday), peanut butter, and cilantro. And this recipe was a revelation of sorts; it calls for golden raisins. During the course of cooking over 6-7 hours, the raisins rehydrate, and when you eat them, they look a bit like chickpeas. But then you bite down, and they release their sweet juices, and that sweetness, amid the hearty, smoky flavor of cumin, red onion, pepper, and a little cayenne, is a burst of glorious freshness. I like it so much that I doubled the amount of raisins called for in the recipe. Check out the recipe below. Continue reading »
