CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: COUS COUS AND ROASTED VEGETABLES
A Middle Eastern and Mediterranean-inspired dish – savory and beautiful and simple to make. You may eat it alone – it is an excellent semi-vegetarian dish – or serve it with some roasted meat.
Cous cous is a terrifically flexible staple food. It cooks very fast (5 minutes), much faster than rice, and many people who like rice end up liking cous cous just as well. It offers endless variations just by changing the liquid in which it is cooked, apart from what else you may add.
Almost any broth or vegetable juice may be used. You may add nuts or raisons or peas or any other bits that take your fancy. You may just cook it in a previously prepared soup, as, say, a vegetable soup, so long as the soup is dilute enough. Adding bits of leftover meat works well.
I adore roasted vegetables, but I like them cooked down perhaps more than is typical, say, in restaurants. It intensifies their flavor, and I like to see some dark golden portions.
Roasted vegetables, too, offer great variety through both the mix of vegetables and the seasoning used. You may add meat broth reductions, too, to the oil and seasoning you use over the vegetables.
Here, I reduce chicken stock and use that as the liquid for the cous cous. It is not strictly vegetarian of course, but it is very good. Just moderately boil off part of the chicken stock you start with before using it as the cooking liquid for the cous cous.
Because well-roasted vegetables suffer great reduction in volume, you must start by using a greater volume than you might at first think suitable. Some vegetables, like tomatoes, reduce more heavily than others. You may want to take account of that.
The vegetables suggested here are tomatoes, onions, red sweet pepper, eggplant, and zucchini.
Cut them into fair-sized chunks – the “drier, harder” vegetables should be cut into somewhat smaller pieces - and lay them out on parchment-lined cookie sheets. Drizzle well with oil and sprinkle with a seasoning combination you like. Just sea salt is nice.
Set the oven for 400 degrees. After the first half-hour, do a periodic check. They take a while.
Serve with a generous amount and variety of vegetables draped over a nice mound of cous cous.
Also nice sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds.
