Tagine or not tagine...

So I ventured into the culinary unknown today, and cooked up a recipe by Emeril for a North African Chicken Tagine. Don't know what inspired me to go Moroccan, but it involved me hunting down some preserved lemon at a Middle Eastern foods store (while I was there I picked up some rose water and pistachios in nougat-- yum.). The dish involved cardamom, cinnamon sticks, cumin, aforementioned preserved lemon...just a bunch of things that we Buitoni pasta people would consider faraway and exotic. The aromas that came wafting out of the pot were just wonderful.

Then the real test.

Serving it to three already impatient and very hungry children. (I took longer than anticipated to cook up the dish. The problem with all these Food Network recipes is that when they say "35 minutes cook time," they neglect to include the "one and a half hours it takes a non-chef-type-person-to-assemble-everything-else-time.")

Now my kids are not the most adventurous when it comes to foods. Michael's getting better, but if you asked Alex what he wanted to eat for dinner, 99.9% of the time, he'll tell you "white bean chicken chili." That's it. You could take my kids to a three star Michelin restaurant, and they'd be disappointed that they wouldn't be seeing any tires. Or traffic lights.

Luckily the response to dinner was fairly positive.

Michael: UMMMMMMM! It's actually GOOD! [Ed. note: I think that he was fairly hungry at this point.]

Alex (after picking chicken bits off of couscous): Is this a good dinner?

Sam: ... [Ed. note: Actually, Sam was just stuffing her mouth with apples, peas, and chicken.]

Well, I take that back about all the kids being picky. So far, Sam seems to pretty much happily eat anything you offer her (Hot Wheels cars included), so I'm hoping that she takes after her mother in this department and at least tries everything.

But I can't complain-- they finished off most everything except for the couscous, which was probably sitting in the pantry a little too long, so I excused them that. They also had peas and apples on the side. A fairly balanced meal.

Lesson #1 learned: Starve 'em, they'll probably try anything.

Lesson #2 learned: Couscous is right up there with sand and those little non-pareils as far as sweep-ability. I'm probaby going to be finding couscous on my kitchen floor weeks from now.