I love couscous.  Always have, always will.  It’s such a quick thing to prepare and makes for a great light lunch or dinner.

I recently discovered a new way of preparing it, thanks to Home Organics.  Until now, I’ve always just poured boiling stock over a bowl of cous cous and fluffed it with a fork until all the sotck was absorbed.  This post, however, has changed my cous cous forever.  ‘Cause it’s toasted, y’all.

It’s a very simple extra way of cooking an already simple ingredient, but it adds the most lovely smokey flavour to your cous cous based salads.  Lush.

What you need for Smoked Mackerel and Toasted Couscous for 4

1 cup of cous cous

2 cups of hot water

About 100g of baby spinach, finely chopped

2 of the best lovely and high quality fillets of smoked mackerel you can find, broken up into chunks

1 lemon

2 tablespoons of pinenuts, toasted

Salt ‘n’ peppa

Olive Oil

Put a dry pan on a medium to high heat and add your cup of cous cous.  Leave it be for a few minutes and give it a shake.  After about 5 minutes or so, it should start changing colour.  Keep an eye on it and keep shaking occasionally until it looks something like this:

Now you have a choice.  You can either transfer the couscous into a large bowl and add your cups of hot water, fluffing it with a fork until all the water is absorbed.

Or you can add the hot water directly to the pan, and stir! stir! stir! until the water is absorbed.  The water will bubble quite a lot when it hits the pan so mind your hands.

If you haven’t already, transfer your couscous to a large bowl.

Mix in the chopped spinach, toasted pinenuts, and smoked mackerel and mix to combine.

Season with salt and pepper, and squeeze in half a lemon.  Give it a taste as it might need more lemon.

Serve up with an extra lemon wedge in case you’re feeling extra zingy.

TUNE

Loving this track from Maggie Eckford, a Mississippi lass with great pipes.

For What It’s Worth – Maggie Eckford (listen via The Hype Machine)

Categories: Dinner, Lunch