I spent this weekend at home cooking for my best diners: my family.  They pay for the food, help wash the dishes, and love almost everything that I make.  So, I thought I’d test out a new recipe on this captive audience.

This recipe for Chicken-Butternut Tagine landed in my inbox courtesy of Cooking Light in October, and Mom had the same recipe in a Cooking Light cookbook, which meant I didn’t even need to print it.  Score!

I didn’t change much, so rather than reposting the recipe, here are my tips for cooking up this dish.

Tips for making Chicken-Butternut Tagine

• Get pre-sliced squash.  There were two packs of this at the store, and I grabbed them like they were going out of style.  I love slicing and dicing, but it’s nice to have some of the work done for you!
• Don’t cut the squash too much – it will cook down a lot.
• Skip the olives.  I’m not sure how butternut squash and green olives are supposed to go together, but I was really not in the mood to find out.  If you’ve tried it, let me know if it works!
• Double up!  The more the merrier!
• … but wait until things start to simmer until you add twice as much liquid.  I added less than twice as much broth as it was still much soupier than I intended.  We solved this by serving it primarily with a slotted spoon, but I would have preferred it with less liquid.
• Serve with couscous!  This is my advice for everything – I love couscous!!

The most remarkable part of this dish was the chicken; because you mix just the spices and the chicken to start, the chicken was incredibly flavorful and tender.  The end result tasted so healthy that I didn’t even feel guilty going back for seconds (and mini-thirds!).

I feel like this would also be really good in the crockpot – coming home to these spices filling the air would be amazing.