recipe: pg’s wacky couscous …

[update: forgot tomato & “turkey” & added pic]
I don’t cook traditional shabbos meals. For us, the biggest thing is that we can enjoy a meal together without work sitting on our shoulders breathing down our necks waiting for us to finish. I don’t spend hours preparing meals (we need to renovate the kitchen before I’ll spend a second more than necessary there). I enjoy cooking. I enjoy baking. I don’t bake much anymore, mostly because I shouldn’t be eating wheat. I buy my challah. I try to frequent the local bakers but that doesn’t always happen due to my work schedule. E is a picky eater. PG and I will try anything (within kashrut guidelines, there are a few exceptions). Anyway, for shabbos dinner this week, he said he wanted couscous.

So I came up with the following. There aren’t really rules for this dish. There aren’t many proportions either. My goal was to cook up foods I have laying in the pantry or open in the fridge before they go bad.

E liked it except for the olives (unexpected) and artichokes (expected). When I reheated some for my dinner tonight I thought the olives were much better, I assume because they had time to absorb the other flavours.

PG’s wacky couscous (parve: contains wheat, soy)
– Israeli couscous (about 1/3 of a bag)
– about a cup of vege broth, I used the boxed kind, this was open in the fridge and I really don’t know how much was left.
– some “fake” smoked turkey. Mine was parve, depending which brand it might be “dairy”. I think I used 6 slices, cut into small squares[photopress:couscous13jan07.jpg,thumb,alignright]
– 1 small jar of marinated artichoke hearts, drained – left whole so I could more easily take them from e’s plate
– 1 small jar of roasted red peppers (you could roast your own, but my broiler is horrid), drained and chopped
– 1 can green beans (they were taking up space)
– 1 can chick peas
– a handful of oil cured black olives, chopped.
– handful of baby grape tomato, sliced in half or thirds
– 3/4 of a cup of water
– 2 small shallots, chopped
– olive oil

In a large sauce pan, caramelize the shallots in some oil (5 min?). add artichoke hearts, turkey, and tomato turning so they slightly brown. add in couscous, red peppers, olives and cook for about 5 more minutes, stirring frequently. add in remainder of non-liquid ingredients, continuing to stir. Pour in vege broth and add enough water so all ingredients seem mostly covered. Bring to boil and then cover and simmer for 20 minutes or so.

For shabbos it was pretty stew-like which was nice. The couscous absorbed the broth overnight and today it was more “traditional” couscous consistency, but still really good.

I’m not fully sure why I’m sharing this super experimental “recipe” but I enjoyed it.

• Category: food