Cooking spree...

Towards the end of the week I felt bad for being lazy in the kitchen and went on a cooking spree.
Thursday night I was hungry as usual, desperate at the state of my fridge and craving something homey but healthy.
So I decided to slice some potatoes, toss them in a mixture of pressed garlic and olive oil, and then I decided to add some leeks sliced. I put everything in a pyrex dish and into the oven, where it cook for a good 30 minutes until the potatoes were golden.
This a side dish I will keep in mind when making pork either roast or chops or even steak.

On friday night I went one step further and actually started cooking dinner before the kids went to bed. I decided to try something entirely new and to adapt a Jamie Oliver recipe couscous and lamb recipe. I replaced the lamb by chicken since Bryan doesn't like lamb. The recipe is a little complicated since there are actually 4 steps to it.
1- First rub the meat with a mixture of spices since I'm always missing something I tend to extrapolate. Here I mixt cumin, coriander, rosemary, a little curry powder and a little paprika I think. I rubbed my chicken drumsticks and put them in the oven at 400 to let them cook.
2- Then you need to sautee oignons in olive oil added garlic and chickpea with some water and balsamic vinegar. Didn't put the whole cup of vinegar since I didn't really know how it would taste and I have to admit that I was a little suspicious.
3- Finally I cooked the couscous in chicken bouillon.
4- Then I put a layer of couscous at the bottom of a dish, poured the chickpea in the middle, added the chicken and covered with the rest of the couscous. Then you cover the dish with a piece of foil and you cook for another hour.

This was very tasty. However next time I do it I will add more spices and definitely more juice it was a little dry. I would also put less couscous and more meat/chickpea.

Finally today I made an upside down pear cake. I am the queen of fruit crumbles and Bryan asked me to find another way to bake fruits. I started making upside down cakes. It also reminds me of my paternal grandmother's cake.

Bryan loves them and since I don't bake that often I decided to make the kids happy and save my pears at the same time.
http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/caramelized-pear-upside-down-cake.aspx
Since once again I don't have all the ingredient I replaced the brown sugar by granulated sugar I didn't put the ginger nor the cinnamon. The result is pretty good maybe a little sweet. I will put less sugar next time.
Tonight will be back to lazy night with Tamales from tradder joes.
Or not, Bryan looked in the freezer for tamales and we are out of them ;( So I looked at recipe online and invented a "mexican casserole".... It was a huge success. I will write down the recipe in another post since I'm falling asleep. Stupid cold.