Roast Vegetable Couscous
Couscous is what we have in our house when we don’t have the time or the inclination to cook. You can dress it up, dress down, side dish, main dish, hot or cold; it’s quicker than pasta and is equally as accepting of just about anything you want to throw at it or have lurking in the fridge.
Couscous is made from durum wheat and just like pasta it comes in varying sizes and there’s a whole wheat version too. It’s better at absorbing flavours than pasta and is a good mopper-upper of juices and oily sauces.
The natural pairing would be a tagine, and you’d be right given its north African roots, but anything remotely Mediterranean or spicy, anything featuring tomatoes, lemon, coriander, chorizo, seafood or chicken works very nicely. A tin or sardines, and a few jalapenos feature regularly in our house…saves walking to the shop!
The recipe then is for the basic couscous preparation using the bog-standard supermarket version; the vegetables are roasted separately and thrown together just before serving.
Ingredients
(serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish)
250g couscous
4 x tablespoons lemon juice
4 x tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
250ml hot stock, chicken or vegetable
For the roast vegetables
2 x whole head of garlic
1 x large red pepper
1 x large aubergine
1 x courgette
2 x average red onions
16 x cherry/small vine tomatoes
Preheat the oven to 140⁰C
Cut the tomatoes in half, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast them cut side facing up in a low oven for 1 ½ hours. (You could skip this stage and roast them with the other vegetables at the same time, but they have a habit of making things soggy, so spread everything out across two roasting tins to compensate).
Prepare the remaining vegetables; peel the onions and keeping the stalk end intact, slice each half into six. Thickly slice the red pepper, cut the aubergine and courgette into chunks and break the garlic into individual cloves, but leave the skins on. (They will slip out their skins beautifully once roasted).
Spread the veg in a roasting tin (or two), drizzle with olive oil and toss together with your hands to coat everything evenly. Season with salt and pepper and roast the veg at 190⁰C for 45mins to an hour.
Using a fork, mix the couscous thoroughly with the lemon juice and the olive oil in a large bowl.
Pour in the hot stock, give it a quick stir and cover the bowl tightly with cling film. Let it sit for 5 mins, then fluff through with a fork and taste for seasoning. That’s it done.
Once the veg is ready add the couscous to the roasting tin and mix everything together, not forgetting to include the tomatoes if you roasted them separately.