Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Onion and tomato couscous

At least I got to use my cool Moroccan plate-when otherwise?


I got beyond my expectations and managed to squeeze in one more post for October! Go, me. Shame the result was iffy.
A friend who also uses the Jerusalem cookbook had been recommending this recipe. I assumed it would be pretty straightforward, in spite of never have been much of a couscous maker. As a home dish, in my mind it's mainly a carbo-rich side dish. So this was my first real attempt to make "something" out of couscous. I think in this case, I really overdid my tendency to skip or replace ingredients (BUY TOMATO PUREE!!).

So this is what I did:

100 grs quick-made couscous (yes, I used that. Tar and feather me).
1 onion, thinly sliced.
2 diced tomatoes
Olive oil
Butter
salt&pepper

Heat up the onion with olive oil in a skillet (you're supposed to put in tomato puree as well). Add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper, cook for about 3 mins.
Boil the couscous for 1 min. (You're supposed to pour boiling stock over it. Needless to say, I didn't have stock, let alone the "good quality" one that the recipe recommends).
Pour tomato and onion sauce on the couscous, set aside (oops, I forgot to cool the couscous down).
Clean up the skillet, melt butter and oil. Add couscous and sauce. Leave to steam at low temperature for 10-12 mins. That's where the recipe really went west.
This dish is supposed to look like this . If you look at mine, it obviously doesn't. It's supposed to be nice and crusty, and you scrape it off from the pan with a knife. It just stayed a regular couscous, with some tomato and onion. An ok starchy side dish, but just blah.

While certainly not a disaster, this was definitely a fail. I guess next time I should make sure I really follow the recipe, but I wonder if there's something else I did wrong, because it didn't solidify at all like it was supposed to.

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