Recipes

Moroccan Couscous Salad

- Alex Leave a comment

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My apologies for yet another really awful photograph! When this salad looked at its best I was too busy celebrating New Year to be photographing!

Disclaimer: San Remo sent me the wholemeal couscous.

Another couscous recipe. After the success of the 50-50 white/wholemeal couscous combination of my last effort, I decided that the salad I took along to a New Year’s Eve party could be 100% wholemeal couscous. I picked a recipe for a warm couscous salad from Jason Atherton’s book Gordon Ramsay’s Maze. This recipe was considerably less hassle to put together (despite having to rustle up the ras el hanout) and I certainly now have plenty of ideas for my own couscous salad creation (no doubt that recipe coming at some point … though this isn’t a blog about couscous so you might have to wait a little).

As usual, I had to make adjustments to Atherton’s recipe (it had raisins in it – I’m really not a fan of raisins in savoury food).

In a bowl, put 1 cup of couscous, a good pinch of salt, 2 tsp of ras el hanout, and a generous glug of good quality olive oil. Pour over 1 cup of boiling water, cover with cling film and leave to sit for 15 – 20 minutes.

With couscous – remember 1 cup of couscous, 1 cup of water or stock.

While the couscous is sitting, peel, core and then finely dice a Granny Smith apple. Finely chopping an apple is more difficult than it sounds (it’s not a shape that lends itself well to being chopped) so don’t get too hung up on size and evenness. Mix some lemon juice through the apple to stop it from discolouring (err on the side of more lemon juice, rather than less).

When the couscous has absorbed all the water, fork it through to fluff it up and then mix through the apple. Stir through some lemon juice (to taste – this depends a bit on how much you used on the apple), lemon rind, and some chopped coriander and rosemary.

I actually left out the coriander as we didn’t have any to hand, but I’d recommend using either that or parsley because, if nothing else, it will add some vibrant green to an otherwise somewhat yellow coloured salad!

This is a salad that you need to eat either the day you make it or the next as the rosemary flavour gets stronger and stronger and eventually dominates.

This couscous salad got a reasonable tick – I took it to a New Year’s Eve party and people who said they didn’t normally eat couscous politely said they enjoyed it. The quantities are much more reasonable here (it was served at a BBQ of 9 people and there was enough left overs for one meal for Andy and me). Andy and I decided that, while this too needs some tweaking, we’re on our way to the perfect couscous salad!

Ras el Hanout

- Alex Leave a comment

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I’ve commented before on how keen I am on making my own spice mixes. Our most recent batch of garam masala was bought from a spice store, in a huge quantity, and turned out to be far too rich in cinnamon for my liking. Is cinnamon even supposed to be in garam masala?

Ras el hanout is a Moroccan spice blend that you may struggle to purchase, leaving you with no option but to make it yourself. It’s ultimately a personal blend and in Morocco no two shops are likely to sell the same product under its banner.

I have based this recipe on that found in Made in Morocco but did a little tweaking because I was in a bit of a rush.

In my spice grinder, I put the following:

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 (generous) tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
a good shake of turmeric
1 tsp cinnamon
2 scant tsp ground ginger
a good shake of smoky paprika
scant ½ tsp ground chillis
a good grating of nutmeg
2 cloves
½ tsp allspice
seeds from 2 cardamom pods
salt and pepper

Give it all a good whizzy up, so that it’s a uniform mix, and store in a jar. This will make about ¼ cup: with spice mixes it’s always best to make them in small quantities unless it’s something you use tons of. Also, if you’re working on finding your perfect blend, make sure you write down what you did so you can make adjustments next time.

I was pretty happy with this – I could have faffed around toasting spices (and the original recipe does mandate that) and I probably will do that in future, if I’m less pushed for time, but other than that, there aren’t any adjustments I’d look to make.

Once you have this, you’ll find plenty of uses for it … but the most simple perhaps is to mix a couple of generous teaspoons through some plain flour and use that to coat garfish fillets before quickly pan frying them. Not only does it add a subtle flavour but the turmeric adds a gorgeous golden glow to the fish.

Pavlova

- Alex Leave a comment

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No arguments today about whether the pav is Australian or Kiwi but I think I can posit that it’s a quintessentially Australian summer dish, found on tables from Christmas onwards.

Another dessert contribution at our Christmas meal, I liked the idea that it was something I could prep in advance and wouldn’t require huge amounts of oven heat. Mum almost always has egg whites in the freezer (they freeze brilliantly, last for ages and work perfectly once defrosted) so she donated 5 egg whites and instructed that “well, I always use Stephanie’s recipe”.

My idea was to do my usual 1 egg white, 55g of caster sugar mix (that’s thanks to Gordon Ramsay) but mum looked a bit doubtful and went on about Stephanie Alexander (again). Had it not been for Jules writing about meringues and the key to a chewy meringue being corn flour, I might have ignored both mum and Stephanie, but she did, so I duly noted the recipe from The Cook’s Companion.

Stephanie’s recipe uses 4 egg whites and 250g caster sugar, which I think is too much per egg white. So I scaled back and for my 5 egg whites I used 275g of caster sugar. I guess if you like things sweet, use more sugar!

Begin by heating the oven to 180°C (conventional) and draw a 20 cm diameter circle on a piece of baking paper. Get a very very clean bowl (grease of any type is your enemy here – make sure whatever you use is clean and dry) and whisk your egg whites, with a pinch of salt, to soft peaks before slowly adding the caster sugar. Whisk until your meringue mix is stiff and glossy. Naturally, for this part I was using my stand mixer, and I was ably assisted by my toddler (who, I suspect, thought we should have spent all afternoon adding mounds of sugar …).

This is where I’d normally stop and consider job done. However, Stephanie’s recipe calls for sprinkling over ~ 2 tsp corn flour, 1 tsp white wine vinegar and a few drops of vanilla extract. I didn’t bother scaling these small quantities up. You then fold these into the mix (gently, gently – you don’t want to knock out air!) and then mound the meringue onto your reversed baking paper, following your traced outline. Use a few dobs of meringue to hold the baking paper to the tray.

Place in the oven (which is at 180°C) and immediately reduce the heat to 150°C and cook for about 1¼ hours. Then turn the oven off and leave the meringue in until it’s all cool.

When you’re ready to serve, whisk ~ 300mL pure cream and arrange your choice of fruit on top. I used strawberries and halved cherries. I finished with some passionfruit pulp in syrup (I had to buy this last minute in a tin at the supermarket which is actually a really handy way of doing it): this adds some much needed acidity and also gives the pav and fruit a lovely glossy finish.

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This served 9 people easily, and there was a little bit left over too. And as pavlova has fruit on it, it’s kind of like health food …