"Coulda been chicken..."

[First and foremost, to understand this title reference please refer to 11:20 in this YouTube clip] 

Spring has officially sprung and it's time to get this blog back into action. To be quite frank, I'm embarrassed at how long it's been since the last post. Big thangs have popped since 2011. Latke has left and returned from Africa and is back in NYC to pursue post-grad achievements at Columbia. Lil Wonton has since moved to Chicago for personal pursuits. But despite her neglect for this food blog, her love (obsession, really) for food never waned. For you and I, dear food, are meant to be together. It's written in the stars....(OK, enough. Please don't get scared and close this tab.)

Part of me thinks the first post in two years would warrant something a bit more "special" than your average chicken. However, a few beers in and I felt compelled to cook/clean out the fridge which also lead to the this-would-be-the-perfect-time-to-crack-back-into-that-food-blog-I-once-had-many-moons-ago thought. So yes, we find ourselves here. With a six pack of Racer 5 and my guilty conscience for a neglected blog and fear of spoiling perfectly good chicken breast.

We start with the Israeli couscous salad. As the weather rises, I refind my love for salads. I'm not really talking about lettuce, but cold noodle salads, couscous salads and the like. (FYI - sesame noodle salad post coming shortly so get ready.) At first thought, Israeli couscous might sound a bit too exotic, but really, you can find it at any Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. The one I buy is from Trader Joe's in the purple box. What you want to start with, is browning it on the stove with a bit of olive oil so you get a nice color. While that cooks and then cools, prep your veggies. My go-to's are diced Persian cucumber, red onion, Italian parsley, cherry tomatoes, pine nuts/almonds and your favorite salad dressing (nothing creamy or too heavy - you want to keep it light and fresh for Spring/Summer). Prep is the most time consuming part. But when you're done, it sure is purdy (see below)

Mmmm Racer 5....

And den....once the couscous is done and cooled, mix all that together with your favorite dressing. Sometimes I make a simple vinaigrette but tonight I used a rosemary lemon vinaigrette I picked up at Whole Foods. Toss it together, and add the nuts last. It's best to keep them toasty and crunchy. I took my pine nuts and broiled them for a hot minute in the oven, then diced them up and added them to the mix. End product...

Next stop....chicken. I had some frozen chicken breasts that I recently defrosted then forgot about. So before they went foul (teehee), I felt like I needed to do something with them. I also had some leftover bacon (seems weird to say, no?) so decided to bacon-wrap the chicken breast because....well, because that's just what you do. I really should have just stopped there. But then I remembered I had breadcrumbs and grated parmesan in the fridge. So we breaded that sh-t. (MMHMM!) Before wrapping the bacon around the chicken, I lightly season-salted and peppered the chicken breasts. Then, the exact order I executed was wrapping, egg washing, breadcrumb/parmesan mixture dabbing/patting. Not sure if this order is traditionally kosher, but this is what seemed to make sense in my head. Ok, so wrap that chicken like a lil babay. Bake in the oven at 425 for about 30 min and you shall have a lil sumpin sumpin that looks like this:

So there you have it! Chicken and Israeli couscous salad. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but uh...