Homemade Lunch Ideas: Lemony Chicken Cous Cous

By and large the recipes I write here will be vegetarian, as I've been eating less and less meat over the less few months, and certainly not cooking with it. While I don't really buy meat myself anymore, I do still eat it occasionally - for example if I've been invited to dinner at a friend's house and it isn't veggie. Bearing this in mind, when I found myself with some perfectly good leftover free-range chicken, I thought it'd be silly to let it go to waste on principle, and instead put it to good use in another homemade packed lunch.

[To make the stock used here, I simmered my chicken carcass (meat already picked off) with a bit of the lemon it was roasted with, two halves of onion, a bouquet garni, salt and pepper, just uncovered, for around two hours. When this is cooled the fat will float to the top, and can easily be skimmed off.]

Ingredients

• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 courgette, sliced into semi circles
• handful of fine green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch lengths
• leftover cooked chicken, roughly chopped
• 200g couscous
• 300ml chicken stock, heated
• handful of raisins
• juice of one lemon
• 1 tsp thyme
• olive oil
• salt and black pepper to taste

Makes two very hearty portions (or three more restrained ones)

1. In a bowl, soak your raisins in the lemon juice. While they're soaking, gently saute your red onion in a little olive oil in a large pan, adding the courgettes after a few minutes, then the fine beans a few minutes after that.
2. Next add in your stock and simmer everything for a just a couple of minutes. Throw in the raisins and lemon juice, thyme and cous cous, turn off the heat and cover. Leave for 5 minutes.
3. Tip out into a big bowl. Once cool, add in the cooked chicken, a good slosh of olive oil, and fork through. Add salt and pepper to taste (personally a think a good amount of pepper works well with the lemon and chicken flavours in this recipe).