Spring Couscous Salad

By : DishinandDishes | 1 Comment | On : April 18, 2011 | Category : Side Dishes

If you haven’t made couscous before because it sounds fancy schmancy and hard to make, you won’t believe how easy, and quick it is to make! This little pearly pasta is fairly healthy as well, depending how you cook it up. And I think I did a pretty good job of keeping it fresh and light.

Add in some veggies and serve hot, or drizzle some balsamic reduction over it or do like I did for this dish and serve it chilled with spring veggies and fresh dressing and it’s a great salad along side some grilled meat in a warm day.

This is how simple it is.

Bring 3 cups of water just to a soft boil on your stove.

Once this boils, remove it from the heat and measure out 1 1/2 cups of it.

Enter the couscous.

Couscous origins hail from North Africa, (most heavy handidly in Morocco) and while originally made from millet, most Western quick-cooking versions are now made from semolina wheat that are moistened, then rolled into tiny balls and coated with fine wheat flour. So basically, cous cous is a tiny little pasta ball. The little pasta pearls are delicious, and fun to experiment with. They have a nice little pop in your mouth and paired with a nice dressing or even steamed with vegetable or chicken broth, they are an out of the normal dish to dine on.

There are typically 3 main sizes of couscous -Lebanese (large), Israeli (medium) and quick-cooking (small). Today, I used the Israeli size. I dumped one cup of it into a heat-safe bowl.

Then I added one and one-half cups of my boiling water right over top.

Put some cling wrap over the top or just cover with a plate like I did. It’s greener and easier.

Now chop up one cup of asparagus and toss it into the remaining 2 cups of boiling water in your saucepan.

Also add in one cup of frozen peas, or fresh if you can find them!

Bring these to a simmer again on the stove and let simmer 3-4 minutes. Then drain and return to pot and cover with water and ice to cool down.

In another small bowl, squeeze the juice of one lemon right into the bowl. This is about 2-3 tablespoons.

Drizzle in some olive oil -about 1/3 of a cup.

Oh yeah, whisk while you drizzle! It’s a tad bit hard to whisk, drizzle and snap photos. Sorry!

Then chop up some herbs..today I used about one tablespoon each of mint, parsley and chives.

Also add in 1/2 t. salt and 1/4 t. of cayenne pepper, just to make it interesting.

By now your couscous should be ready and steamed. Uncover it and taking a fork, fluff it up a bit, just in case it’s sticking.

Pour your vegetables right over top and your dressing as well.

Mix all of this up with a large spoon. Yummm.

You can eat this hot, or do like I did, and cover it and chill it for an hour. It’s a wonderful cold salad.

I think this would be fabulous topped with some grilled Ahi Tuna slices or even a nice piece of salmon. In the summer, serving it all cold would be so refreshing.