A Hungry Bear

I had planned on making a pizza last week, but things fell apart (meaning: jobs/school got stressful and we ordered a papa john’s pizza to cope - yes, really). That left me with some fresh basil and tomatoes to use up - why not throw them in couscous for a light side to roast chicken?

Grocery list: 3-4 roma tomatoes, a handful of basil, 2-4 ounces mozzarella (to cube), half a package of couscous, olive oil, 1 lemon.

Cook couscous according to directions on the package. It’s standard for this to take about 5-10 minutes, plus cooling time. If you know you’re going to want a cold couscous salad, as opposed to room temperature, you should make it hours in advance and set in the fridge. While it’s cooling, you can blanch the tomatoes, to make them easier to peel and chop.

I learned this neat trick at Knife Skills class - if you drop the tomatoes into boiling water (time & energy saver: reserve the hot water for cooking the couscous) for a minute, the skins will peel right off easily. Only keep them in the water for 1 minute, they don’t need more than that. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and dunk them under (or in) cold water to immediately stop the cooking process.

Peel off the skins, quarter and remove the seeds if you prefer, then chop.

Chop the basil.

Cube the mozzarella.

Stir a generous drizzle of good olive oil into the couscous, along with the juice of half a lemon. Stir in the tomatoes, then the mozzarella and basil. Season with salt and pepper, and serve. This was the side to my chicken with pancetta and olives - a random combination but it allowed me to try 2 different recipes at once!