Couscous Salad

I know, I’ve been a bad blogger recently. Regular blogging is tough. Maybe its because I’m easily distracted. Look at the pretty butterfly over there….What was I saying? Oh yes, distractions, they happen and often. It is easy and surprisingly fun to write this blog once I get into it but sometimes I forget I even have a blog. Every once in a while it is nice to have a pizza-booze-tely night with my lovely boyfriend and leave the cooking to the professionals over at pizza hut. How I love their cheese stuffed crust, such a guilty pleasure. And after one of those nights it’s easy to become lazy about cooking. I’ll end up making quick meals or things we’ve had a million times–nothing blog worthy.

Then there are other times, like tonight, when I cook up a storm. I’ve got five different dishes on the menu tonight, four of which still need to be assembled–maybe I should be writing this later. The masses can wait. After all the chef should be able to decided when it’s dinner time. But as for the dishes, I’ll be blogging most of them in the near-ish future once I get my computer fixed. Now that I finally have my camera back, my laptop decides to call it quits. It’s a hard drive issue, so hopefully I’ll be able to have it fixed quickly. At the moment all my pictures are stuck in limbo. I really hope I’ll be able to get them out.

Anyway, let me tell you about this salad. It was lovely.

I ended up abandoning the blog writing last night so I could finish dinner at a reasonable hour. It was a lot of stuff to do but we had an amazing dinner. It was a dinner composed mainly of appetizers. Those little things add up. Five appetizers really do make a full meal. Next time we might even get away with less than that. This couscous was sort of an afterthought. I needed a salad but wanted something different than a regular green salad. Then I remembered that I bought couscous with this idea in mind. After looking up instructions on how to cook couscous (I’d never done it before) I went to it. The rest of the ingredients were tossed in as I went along. I was inspired by the flavors of Tabbouleh and by the contents of my fridge. It turned out to be one of my favorite dishes of the evening. If you don’t have the ingredients I used, you could add just about anything. Tomatoes would work great, maybe even some sundried tomatoes, olives, cilantro, spicy peppers, dried cranberries–any of these things would make great ingredients for this adaptable dish.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 1/4 cups couscous
1 bunch of flat leaf parsley
1 bunch of purple leaf mint (or any kind of mint)
1 red bell pepper
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 cup crumbled feta

Directions

Add the chicken broth, salt, pepper and 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a small pan. Let the broth come to a full boil and then remove the pan from the heat. Add the couscous and stir around so that the couscous is fully incorporated. Cover the pot and let it sit for five minutes. Remove lid and transfer couscous to your serving bowl. Gently fluff couscous with a fork.

Roughly chop the parsley and mint. Make sure to use a sharp knife so aren’t just bruising your herbs. Transfer mint and parsley to your bowl with the couscous. Then prepare you bell pepper by removing the seeds and ribs. Chop the bell pepper into 1/2 inch pieces, add to couscous. Gently toss the couscous to incorporate the mint, parsley and peppers throughout. Pour the lime juice and remaining two tablespoons of olive oil over the couscous. Toss again. Crumble feta over the top and serve. Can be served warm or cold.

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