I’m hooked on the Near East CousCous – the Roasted Garlic flavor, to be exact.* But it’s not really widely available on local grocery store shelves; doubly so since we moved from 45 minutes south of Kansas City to 45 minutes north. The only store ’round these parts that seems to carry the Near East Line is Whole Foods, and it’s uber-expensive there. I was ordering it by the case from Amazon, but alas! – it’s currently out of stock.

Finding myself with a craving for couscous and couscous-free cupboard (o what a quandary!), I decided to improvise and make my own couscous concoction. After my initial plate of FAIL!, I came up with a totally easy, totally veg*n, totally yummy recipe. And only on my second try. Yay me!

DIY Sundried Tomato CousCous

Ingredients

Plain Couscous
Water
Sundried tomatoes (the semi-dried stuff that comes in a bag or bulk; not the stuff pickled with oil in a jar)
A little dab o’ olive oil
A few dashes each of garlic and onion powder

Directions

This is practically self-explanatory.

Start off by bringing some water to boil in a small pot. How much water you add will depend on how much couscous you’re cooking.

For instant couscous (the stuff that resembles baby macaroni), Near East lists the following couscous/water ratio on their box:

1/3 cup couscous / 1/2 cup water
3/4 cup couscous / 1 cup water
1 cup couscous / 2 cups water

If you’re unsure how much water you should use, always underestimate. It’s easy to add more water as needed; infinitely harder to remove water from a soupy bowl of couscous.

After the water starts to boil, toss in the olive oil, sundried tomatoes, and garlic and onion powder. For the olive oil, just a dab will do ya. The garlic and onion powder depends on your tastes; for 10 ounces of (dried) couscous, I used about a teaspoon each of garlic and onion powder. The amount of sundried tomatoes, too, depends on how much you like them. Seeing as a lurve them almost ’nuff to marry ‘em, I added a few fistfulls. OK, I finished the bag off. What of it?

Mix all this in, cover your pot, and let the water boil (on low) for a bit. The longer you let it simmer, the mushier the tomatoes will get, and the more they’ll flavor the previously-blah water.

To finish, stir in the couscous and let cook. If the water disappears before the couscous is nice and fluffy, just add in a bit more. You can’t go wrong.

FYI, the longer you let the couscous marinate with the tomatoes, the stronger the taste will be. Thus, this dish is even better as a leftover.

On my first attempt, I added the tomatoes as an afterthought, after the couscous was cooked and – gasp! – half-eaten. I let it sit in the fridge for a day, and not only were the uncooked tomatoes nice and soft upon reheating – having absorbed some water from the couscous – the couscous was quite flavorful. So it’s really hard to mess this dish up!

* Many of their flavors aren’t vegan or even vegetarian; why not write Near East and encourage them to offer more animal-friendly options, hmmmm?

(Crossposted to.)

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Tagged: recipe recipes vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism couscous tomatoes sundried tomatoes near east garlic onion flickr photos diy

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Food & Recipes, Human. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.