An Easy Couscous Salad Recipe

Here's a very easy couscous salad recipe which also happens to be absolutely delicious. It's great for hot summer days but it's also very filling and tasty as a winter meal with the addition of some pre-cooked vegetables. It's one of those wonderful recipes which you can vary to your heart's content with different vegetables and proteins to create either a rich and complex main meal or a stunningly simple side dish.

This is a lovely way to prepare couscous and it's also very easy as it involves almost no cooking!

Method

Weigh out half a pound of couscous and put it into a large bowl - it will expand once it is soaked.

Add about 250 ml or 8-10 fluid ounces of water, 4 tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of a large lemon. Alternatively, you can use a couple of dessert spoonfuls of cider vinegar instead of the lemon. Crush in some garlic into the mix if you like and season it to taste.

Set the couscous aside to steep and expand.

Prepare one or two large peppers by holding them over a flame until the skins are blackened. It's amazing just how long you can leave them on a gas flame without them turning to cinders! (Even so, a pair of tongs is a help here.) Turn them from time to time.

Wrap them up in a damp tea towel for 10 minutes and afterwards the skin should peel away quite easily.

Chop them, let them cool and add chopped fresh tomatoes, raw onion or shallots, sliced carrots - whatever you fancy or have handy, really.

After 20 minutes the couscous should have "cooked" in the water, juice and oil mix. That is, the grains will have swollen and be soft enough to eat and digest.

Chop and add some herbs - chives, coriander, parsley, fennel and tarragon are all good and mint is wonderful in small quantities.

Serve with a main dish or to beef it up, add cubes of feta cheese and serve with green salad.

Very easy, very quick and totally delicious!

You can also prepare couscous in the standard way and use it as a base for a salad. Here's how:

Cook your couscous (or bulgar) and set it aside to cool. Prepare a mixed salad of chopped tomatoes, chopped spring onions, rocket and a few sprigs of mint and other herbs such as dill and tarragon. Add a generous glug of olive oil and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar.

When the couscous is cool, stir in the salad and add some feta cheese as garnish. Add some seeds and nuts, too, such as cashews and poppy seeds.

You can also recycle a few cooked vegetables such as peas or cauliflower florets if you want.

This makes a quick and nutritious summer lunch. Serve it with a good mayonnaise and a hunk of home-made bread.

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