Alien Hand Syndrome Cous Cous
ingredients
makes an enormous plate of filling stuff that can be served as most of a meal for two
- 1 courgette
- 1 onion
- half cup of cous cous (medium)*
- half cup of vegetable stock*
- olive oil
- 260g can of chickpeas**
- As many sundried tomatoes as you can place along the diagonal of the chopping board***
- a great many teaspoons of harissa
- some mixed herbs of some kind.****
- a few capers
- some leftover dried apricots
** note - It will probably say 400g(drained weight 260g). Obviously this is post-soaking weight if you're doing things properly.
*** note - larger chopping boards are available
**** note - I'm rocking a subzi polo mix at the minute: parsely, dill, chives, coriander and fenugreek.
soundtrack
Thunderbirds theme tune, followed by Aleksi Virta.
process
First, chop onion and put it in the pan over a low heat to fry in olive oil. Then add small-ish blocks of chopped courgette. When stuff starts looking brown, put in the harissa, a strong tunisian chilli paste. When you get to this stage, you may think you should add amount according to taste, but you won't. You will just watch fascinated, and a little appalled as your hand moves back and forth seemingly of it's own accord ladling ever more firey potency into the pan where 'your' food is cooking. Then you regain composure by bunging in the chick peas and stirring to coat evenly. Then, having chopped the tomatoes and capers up with your special tomato knife, and hacked the dried apricots up a bit you add them to the.. oh dear gods no the left hand is ladling more harissa into the mix like some unstoppable ladling machine! How can this be happening and why won't it stop? Distract the hand by making it put the vaguely specified herbs in. As the mix fries, put the vegetable stock on to boil, add some salt and immediately take it off when it begins to boil. Chuck in liberal quantities of olive oil followed by the cous cous. Cover and ignore for a few minutes. When it's all fluffy and nice, stir the mixture through the cous cous and gingerly taste it with some hot pitas. Affect surprised noises that somehow exactly the right amount of harrisa was added.
There is still no decision about which microformat to use for recipies, otherwise this entry would be using them.
