Lola’s Kitchen: Lukewarm Couscous Salad Recipe

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts, tens list posts about food or recipes or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Designs.

This is another recipe that I found in the magazine from the grocery store I do most of my shopping. They have a monthly magazine filled with recipes, sometimes I don’t like any of them, but they also have some issues with some great ideas. After we bought a big pot of couscous I was looking for some new couscous recipes to try and when I saw this recipe I knew I had to give it a try. And yum what a good recipe it is, it’s a great blend of different ingredients and flavours, that all mix well together. It’s relatively simple to make, but still takes some time due to having to chop up the different ingredients, but it’s so worth it!
This recipe is based on Allerhande their Lauw­war­me cous­cous met groen­ten en krui­den­ri­cot­ta recipe (dutch recipe)

Ingredients

• Couscous – 220 gram/ 1 1/2 cup
• Red or Green bell pepper – 1
• Green Peas – 200 gram/ 1 heaped cup
• Spinach – 300 gram/ 1 1/3 cup
• Celery – 40 gram/ 3/8 cup
• Dried Apricots – 150 gram/ 1 cup
• Pistachio nuts – 95 gram/ 1/2 cup
• Ricotta or other cheese – to taste
• Curry powder – 1 tablespoon
• Cayenne Pepper – 1/2 teaspoon
• Salt (optional)

This recipe feeds about four people. Sorry again for the weird cups measurements, dutch recipes always translate a bit weirdly to US metrics.

Method

1. First start prepping the ingredients that don’t need to cook or get baked. Chop the celery in small pieces and set aside. Chop the apricots in small pieces and set aside.
2. In a small pan on low to medium heat bake the pistachio nuts for about 3-5 minutes or till they start to brown. Remove them from the fire and put in a small bowl.
3. Slice and dice the red bell pepper in small pieces. Then bake the red bell pepper and the peas for 5 minutes in a wok or medium sized pan. Then cut the spinach in small slices or as small as you can cut it. You can add the spinach to the pan with the red bell pepper and peas, but I like to bake it separately.
4. In the meantime boil some water. Put the couscous, curry powder and cayenne pepper in a medium sized pan, don’t put it on the fire, as it doesn’t need to cook, but do put it on a heat proof surface. Then add about 300ml water. Put the lid on the pan and let it stand there for 10 minutes, you can add some additional water if everything is gone.
5. By now the red bell pepper and peas are probably warm. Put it in a bowl and wash the pan with some water. Then add a bit of oil and bake the spinach for a few minutes. In the meantime cut the pistachio nuts into smaller pieces. Once the spinach is warm put it in a bowl and set aside.
6. Now you have all the ingredients in separate bowls and can start to assemble everything on your plate. You can combine the ingredients in one bowl as well, but we prefer to assemble out plates ourselves as we like different ratio’s of the ingredients.
7. Start with some scoops of couscous and then add some of every other ingredient. At the end add some blue cheese and then mix well. You can also add a bit of salt (optional), but in my opinion it usually tastes strong enough without any extra spices.
8. Enjoy your lukewarm couscous salad!

Pictures

Variation Tips

• Vary with veggies. Instead of red bell pepper, green peas and spinach, you could also use other veggies. I would recommend to pick veggies that don’t taste too strongly on itself and would fit well in this dish.
• Vary with nuts. Don’t like pistachio nuts? Use other nuts you like instead, like cashews, almonds, peanuts, pecan nuts or walnuts.
• Vary with fruit. Don’t like apricots? Use other dried fruits, like raisins, mango, pineapple or other dried fruit.

What’s your favourite dish with couscous?