Couscous

So usually, my starch of choice in the humble sweet potato. Easy, tasty, healthy. While a sweet potato serves as an excellent base for chili or a tofu scramble, most of the time I just eat them plain with perhaps a dash of salt. I used to always just microwave them, but I've been dabbling with macrobiotics lately, which eschews microwave cooking, on the grounds that it is sooo completely unnatural and that nothing should cook that fast. Overall I agree, though I'm not tossing mine anytime soon. But it is kind of freaky if you think about it. I mean, SHOULD something that takes an hour at 300 degrees F to cook in an oven be ready to eat after five minutes in a microwave? And what, exactly, is a microwave? (come on science geeks!) What is it really doing to the food? Anyway, so recently I started baking my sweet potatoes and OH MY GOD what a difference. Even the skin is delicious. I just can't go back.

All of this is just a really long way of saying that 1. I like my sweet potatoes, 2. I like them BAKED in the oven, 3. tonight my oven was otherwise occupied so I had to come up with another starch to round out my meal, and 4. I didn't have time to make rice. And then, I remembered: couscous!

Couscous is a tiny little round "grain" that is actually a pasta made out of wheat. And it cooks in five minutes. My only problem is that I have a difficul time seasoning it so that it tastes good if I'm not using as the base for some sort of pilaf. So, I turned to Veganomicon, and found a recipe for Tomato Couscous with Capers (p 117).

Now, I am weird about tomatoes. I don't like them raw, and I don't like big chunks of cooked tomatoes. I like tomato everything: salsa, as a base for soups, pasta sauce, etc... But I like them finely diced or pureed and I like them cooked. And yes, I have had amazingly fresh straight-off-the-vine tomatoes (my grandparents are farmers) and I still feel this way. So instead of mixing in the diced tomatoes later, as the recipe indicates, I pureed to the tomatoes and cooked the entire can with the juice/water/couscous. I also doubled to total amount of liquid, just because the recipe calls for a 1:1 liquid to couscous ratio, while the directions on the couscous calls for a 3:1 liquid to couscous ratio, so I compromised with a 2:1 ratio.

Taste-wise I enjoyed this dish. I think it might still need some more seasoning or something. Or more texture. Next time I might just chopped up the tomatoes so the diced chunks are smaller instead of pureeing them. And I might add some toasted pecans or something for a little extra flavor and crunch. Oh, or maybe ground flaxseed for a little texture and some omega-3s. Hmmm. But still, it was a really easy, quick recipe that would definitely go well with a lot of different things. It would also be great as a base for a pilaf with chickpeas and some lightly sauteed chopped spinach mixed in. I have lots of leftovers, so if I try anything that truly makes me go WOW! later this week, I'll let you know.