Saffron Chicken with Couscous

This is my new favorite recipe. It’s easy, low fat, exotic enough to impress your guests and familiar enough to sneak past picky partners and most children. What more could a girl ask for? Hmmm… dessert…
--AnglophileLV

Saffron Chicken with Couscous

Serves 4

3 cups water
1 can chickpeas
Uncooked chicken pieces (legs, thighs, wings, whatever you like – I used 6 drumsticks)
1 stick celery, chopped
½ tsp cinnamon
½ onion chopped
¼ heaping tsp turmeric
1 good pinch saffron threads (world market has them, but they are hard to find in the chain groceries)
¼ cup raisins
Salt and pepper to taste

¾ cup plain fast-cooking couscous (the kind you add to boiling water and leave for 5 minutes)
1 cup broth from above recipe

Pour the water into a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the celery, onion and cinnamon, then the turmeric and saffron. Add the chicken. Let boil around 30 minutes, then add the raisins last. Add salt and pepper to taste.

When you have five minutes left on the chicken, ladle 1 cup of the chicken broth into a small pot and bring to a boil. Add the ¾ cup couscous (check the measurements on the box, this serves 2, but the box serves six) to the boiling broth, turn off the heat, cover and wait five minutes. I like to put some raisins in this also, which I add with the hot water so they re-hydrate a little.

I plated this on a long oval dish and made a kind of nest out of the couscous with all the chicken and chickpeas in the middle.