For Anna, Carrie and Lorelei

I have made this dish many times; certainly for the legendary couscous party well-known to our friends. It has attended two Bat Miztvah celebrations, and numerous school potlucks. There's always some in my freezer. It is, not surprisingly, the most requested recipe from my repertoire (other than jam!).

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 Chicken Tagine

INGREDIENTS:

12 oz. Apricot sauce (puréed apricots or peaches)

¼ c up Creamy peanut or cashew butter
1/3 c Orange juice
1/3 c Dry sherry
2 T Balsamic vinegar
2 T Lime juice
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 t salt
2 t Curry powder
½ t Cinnamon
½ t Cardamom
½ t Ground cumin
1 lb. Chicken

INSTRUCTIONS:

In a large ovenproof dish, combine preserves, peanut butter, orange juice, sherry, vinegar, lime juice, garlic, salt, and seasonings. Cut the chicken in large bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken pieces to the marinade and coat well. Cover and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 350F degrees and bake the chicken and marinade uncovered for 20 to 30 minutes. Serve over the prepared couscous. Share with friends. 

Meatballs

During the first few months of my residence in Germany, way back when, I was severely hampered in my grocery shopping because of my limited vocabulary. I had learned one word, Hackfleisch. Ground meat could get me through many a menu: meatballs, meatloaf, and burgers (tacos would have been on the menu had tortillas been available in the Vaterland).

Ground beef is in the headlines yet again, this time because of production methods. Blasted off the spines of unhealthy beasts, mixed with ammonia and tainted by the now-infamous pink slime. Once again, real butchers stand tall and proclaim that they grind their own meat, and that it is meat and only meat, nothing else. A few more customers have woken to question just what is in their food.

It is in this context that I stroll into the tiny butcher shop in the sleepy village of Cloughjordan in Ireland, hoping to find something for supper. I had leftover noodles and red sauce from our first jet-lagged evening, and was hoping against hope for a few hundred grams of ground beef that we could eat. I wasn't sure what to expect, given that the shop window featured not only an etched cow's head, but a display of assorted tools, as the butcher's doubles as the hardware store. Screwdrivers and sausages.

The selection of both hammers and meat was not huge, but it all looked very good, clean and bright. Still recalcitrant, I asked about where the meat came from. "Nowhere," replied the rosy-cheeked fellow without a hint of mischief. Wondering if my accent was hampering communication, I tried again: From how far away was the meat? "The family has a farm just up the road."

In other words, nowhere. Nothing to fear here, no frightening slime or corporate profits. Just real meat from a few yards up the road, from the man who raised and slaughtered it. No need to make it any harder. Or tastier.

Blow-ins

They are nearly everywhere I turn here: blow-ins, the endearing Irish term for those who are not from these parts. The village "in calm of middle country" is full of folks who, for whatever reasons, have gotten off the bus because they didn't want to go where it was headed. And somehow they ended up here, lost in the middle of Ireland, in Cloughjordan.

Cloughjordan has many distinctions: birthplace of Irish revolutionary Thomas MacDonagh, and named after a stone brought back from the crusades (Cloughjordan means stone; Jordan would be the crusader's rock's source). But these days, it is the Ecovillage that is being built here that draws both new blow ins and locals who are both curious and interested. We stumbled upon the village virtually, and unsure whether the appeal was the Eco-centric foundations or the appeal of an address in Tipperary, decided we had to see for ourselves.

So we are here, in Cloughjordan, trying to figure out how to visit four pubs in three nights, how to balance respecting folks privacy with our wanting to ask a thousand questions. And of course, this being Ireland and a small town, we needn't have worried, for people know (of) us--those Americans--before we have a chance to open our mouths. Short chats in the street, across a fence, on the front step and in the living room, longer discussions where we pick up the thread a day or two later.

But it all boiled down to broccoli. Delicate purple broccoli sprouts, bountiful in the village these days. We saw them on our first tour through the village, fully jet lagged, a crate full in the CSA barn, with a sign on them that said "loads;" piled on the counter behind the lady of the house who offers to show us her home office, offered like a bouquet and tucked into the basket of the baby's stroller. Best of all, they were there, these yuppie blow-ins (for they certainly cannot be considered a native species) heaped in a Pyrex dish, an offering to the groaning table at the community supper to which these blow-ins were warmly welcomed.