Delightful (and easy) Couscous

I (Emily) have liked cous cous for a long time. It's a nice break from pasta and rice, and it lends itself super well to the Middle Eastern palette as well as to quickly-fashioned dinners. Couscous is also pretty cheap if bought in bulk. I get mine at the Seward Co-op, and I know Trader Joe's has boxes of it. Much of this recipe was a result of improvisation, so feel free to adjust proportions/veggies based on what you've got. And don't let the long ingredients list fool you, because the actual process is quite simple. Enjoy!

Ingredients

For the Couscous

• 1- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat couscous
• 1- 1 1/2 cups water and/or veggie broth
• dash salt
  
• 1 TBS butter

For the Veggies:

• A drizzle of olive oil
• 1/2 red onion, sliced or diced
• 1/2 pepper, sliced or diced
• 2-4 cloves garlic, chopped small
• 1 cup chickpeas, canned or rehydrated and boiled
• a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
  
• a sprinkling of sesame seeds
• a dash of hyssop, if you've got it
• 1-3 TBS tahini paste
• 2-3 generous squirts of lemon juice
• 1/3- 2/3 cup veggie broth, for simmering purposes
• a handful or two of fresh spinach
• salt and pepper to taste

For the top:

• a handful of kalamata olives, sliced
• crumbled feta cheese to taste
  

Procedure

• Boil the water or broth, along with the butter and salt, in a medium saucepan. Once it's boiled, add the couscous, stir remove from the heat, and let it sit, covered, for five minutes.
• Drizzle the olive oil into a skillet and cook the red onion over medium heat until it softens.
  
• Add the pepper, garlic, chick peas, sesame seeds, hyssop, and lemon juice and cook for a little while, until the ingredients are warm and the pepper is starting to be a little less firm.
• Pour in the broth and mix in the spinach. Now just let it simmer for awhile, adding the lemon juice and parsley as you like.
• Once everything is softened to your satisfaction, and most of the broth has been absorbed or evaporated, season to taste. Then mix the veggies into the cooked couscous, along with the tahini.
• Serve topped with sliced olives and feta.

Greek-Stuffed Eggplant

So this dish came strictly from necessity; I had an eggplant in my possession the night before returning to Georgia for Christmas and knew that it wasn't going to last the break. I decided to bake it, thinking that it'd be easy enough to make it into eggplant pasta or something, but then I realized that I had half a red onion and some feta too and started just kinda experimenting. The results were far superior to what I'd anticipated. Amounts are approximate, and I'm sure this could be easily doubled.

Greek-Stuffed Eggplant

Ingredients

• 1 medium eggplant(or any size, really), sliced in half lengthways and salted(if you don't know how to salt an eggplant, see my post on eggplant pasta from the summer)
• A few TBS olive oil
• 1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
• a generous slosh of lemon juice
• 2-4 TBS tahini (which can be easily home-made, it turns out!!)
• 1 huge clove garlic (or a couple little ones)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1-2 handfuls of parsley, chopped or ripped into little bits
• 1/4-1/3 cup feta cheese crumbles
• salt and black pepper to taste

Procedure

• Heat the oven to 400°F
• Put the salted eggplant onto a well-oiled baking sheet and coat both sides in more oil. You don't have to go overboard, but make sure the eggplant doesn't stay dry. Bake the eggplant until it's brown and slightly crispy on the edges-- 30-45 minutes. You'll probably want to flip the eggplant once.
• Heat olive oil in a skillet and saute the onion and oregano over medium heat until they're soft. The slower you do this, the better it'll probably taste. (This was the point in my evening when I was going "Oh geez, I have a lot of stuff to use up. Umm...let's get this side dish going and figure out what to do with the eggplant when it's done," so I was stalling for time a bit). Add the garlic, lemon juice, and parsley, and stir in the tahini.
• Once the eggplant comes out of the oven, wait a minute for it to be cool enough to handle, and then scoop out the innards. Do this carefully, so you don't go right through the skin. I used a spoon to get out most of it, then pulled out the rest with a butter knife, but whatever works for you. Throw the pulp into the skillet with everything else and mix it in well, chopping it into smaller pieces with a spoon.
• When everything's nicely incorporated, and you've thrown in some salt and pepper and whatever other seasonings you like to taste, scoop the whole mix back into the eggplant shells. Sprinkle the tops with the feta crumbles and more tahini (if you like) and then let it bake at 350°F for about 10-15 minutes, then broil for 2-3 minutes more (broiling is scary, so watch it carefully or it'll burn!)
• I ate mine just as it was, but I'm sure a spinach salad with kalamata olives would have made it even better.
  

Happy New Year, all!