Home ec practical assesment: Moroccan lemon chicken.

This term in Home Economics we have been learning about food culture. We have explored a variety of dishes and food that have influenced our food culture, along with various facts about what influences us to buy certain foods and how other cultures's foods differ from our own.
For our assessment, we were given a research task. Our task was to choose a country, learn about their culture, climate and national foods. Jess and I worked together on a research project about Morocco.

Moroccan Lemon chicken:

Summary: This dish was easy to make, flavoursome, budget friendly and took less than an hour to prepare, cook and clean. All aspects of the dish were cooked in the same pan, saving time on washing and heating. The timings worked well, eg. while the chicken was cooking we could cut the onions and measure the spices. Overall, this is a great dish.



Lemon: The first thing to do was to slice and caramelise the lemon. This took 5 minutes, if that. I think the lemon could have been cooked a little longer to bring out the flavour, but over all, went well. I was in charge of the lemon. Whilst I was doing the lemon, Jess was preparing the chicken.

Chicken: The chicken needed to be sliced in half patted dry with a paper towel. It was then browned for about 10 minutes in a pan, 5 minutes on each side. The reason we didn't need to fully cook the chicken is because the chicken was cooked in the sauce later on. While Jess was doing the chicken, I was measuring the spices and cutting the onion.

Onion and spices: First I measured the spices, adding 1 pinch of turmeric to 0.5 tbsp of water as a substitute to saffron water. The chicken browned fast, so Jess took it out of the pan and cut the garlic while I cut the onion. The onion was then cooked and then the spices.

All together: Once the onion, garlic and spices were cooked perfectly, we added the water. The sauce was then brought to the boil. We added the chicken to the sauce, lowered the heat and covered it.The olives, lemon juice and parsley were added just before serving. Once the sauce was done and the chicken was cooked, we sliced the chicken and served  it with the lemon and pita bread.

Reflection: This dish was amazing. It had a complex collection of flavors and textures, was easy to cook and was cheap to make.
I think we did a great job creating our dish, staying on time and making no major mistakes. Jess and I worked well as a team and I am very happy with our final product.



Nutrition:
We only made a small serving of this dish, how ever, the nutritional information for a regular serve of this dish was available on the website.

A regular serving of this dish contains:
-Less than 300 calories (making it an extremely light, yet filling meal)
-1 serving of protien (chicken)
-1 serving of fat (oil)
-1 serving of carbohydrates (couscous/pita bread)
what I would add: I would add some chickpeas to the dish, maybe some spinach as well for extra fibre and a serving of vegetables.
Over all, not a bad dish, very light on the calories, leaving room for more customisation.