Delicious couscous salad with puy lentils

I can feel myself slipping.. Slipping into the muddy waters of the overweight and out of control people… Slipping because… well, because food is just too damn tasty… and I have little to no self-control. A pretty cupcake makes me drool, when I see a gorgeous photo of a tiramisu I want to make it too and yes, I even start to have serious cravings when I see a pretty salad. And I am weak… So weak… If you’ve paid any attention to the little weight counter on the right you’d already noticed it went from -10 pounds to -7 pounds. A clearer sign you could not get!

I found out I gain weight when I’m really busy. No time to eat properly so I snack. I come home and don’t feel like cooking, so I make bad choices. As soon as things quiet down a bit I become a better me again. But then last night we signed the contract for our new kitchen, plus Tom and I were having our 20th anniversary (and no, we’re not married..) so a celebration was in order. And in our household, a celebration means wine.. Lots of wine. You get the picture!

I guess it’s the continuing story of our life; ups and downs.. But enough faffing around, time to get back on track again. And join the ranks of ..slightly less obese people.. I’ll get there. It might take some time, but in the meantime, I get to share these gorgeous salads with you. This one takes a bit of effort. It’s not done within half an hour, so there is some planning needed in order to get the best results, but if you take that time you will not be disappointed. It features very healthy ingredients such as puy lentils and couscous, tomatoes and arugula so what’s not to like? In the meantime; I do need some buttkicking done, please…

Mediterranean couscous and lentil salad

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Serves	4
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	30 minutes
Total time	40 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Website	Epicurious

Ingredients

• 1 cup puy lentils
• 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup Couscous
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 garlic clove (large, minced and mashed into a paste with 1/4 tsp salt)
• 1/2 cup fresh mint (finely chopped)
• 1 bunch arugula (rocket) (stems discarded and leaves washed well, spun dry and chopped)
• 2 cups vine ripened cherry tomatoes (halved)
• 1/4lb feta (crumbled)

Directions

In a small saucepan simmer lentils in water to cover by 2 inches until tender but not falling apart, 15 to 20 minutes, and drain well. Transfer hot lentils to a bowl and stir in 1 tablespoon vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Cool lentils completely, stirring occasionally. In a saucepan bring water to a boil and add couscous and salt. Remove pan from heat and let couscous stand, covered, 5 minutes. Fluff couscous with a fork and transfer to a large bowl. Stir in 1 tablespoon oil and cool completely, stirring occasionally. In a small bowl whisk together garlic paste, remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar, remaining 3 tablespoons oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir lentils and dressing into couscous. Chill salad, covered, at least 3 hours and up to 24. Just before serving, stir in remaining ingredients and season with salt and pepper.

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• Couscous salad with roquefort and corn
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• Greek salad

Delicious and healthy couscous salad

The alarm goes at 6 am and I fumble around to hit the repeat button. I need just a tiny bit longer… Ten minutes later the damn thing is going on again and with a deep sigh I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Gizmo – always on the lookout for people movements – immediately comes to stand at my side, miauwing loudly. Logically feeding her is the first thing she has on her mind. And she makes sure it is also the first thing I have on my mind… She will walk in front of me all the way from the bedroom to the bathroom, so if I want to avoid falling over her… feeding time it is.

I walk sleepily downstairs to make coffee and breakfast and peer out of the window, expecting grey skies and falling rain. That has been the norm for the last couple of months with the occasional day of sunshine in between. So out of habit I peer outside and continue my walk to the coffeemachine and then it hits me… there is no rain!! I peer outside again and lo and behold… it is true; it is actually dry… It’s too early in the day to have the sun out but it looks promising.

All of a sudden much more awake; I quickly make a pot of coffee, pour some granola and quark in a bowl, add some blueberries that are leftover from yesterday’s shoot to it and go back upstairs. I wake up Tom and we have coffee in bed as we do every morning.

Red and beautiful; radishes

I check my Iphone to see if the weather forecast is predicting the same thing that I am seeing (not that the weather forecast is by any means reliable, but, as we used to say when I worked in planning; a forecast is by definition always wrong).

In this case however I am glad to confirm that we did indeed have a sunny day. Unbelievable but true. Even as I peer outside now from behind the computer the sky is bright blue and the sun is still out (it 6.30 pm.

Still it amazes me how the entire air seems to vibrate with autumn rather then summer. I had dinner with two friends on tuesday (at Gent aan de Schinkel) and because I was early, I decided to have a coffee outside on the terrace of the cafe in Amsterdam where we were meeting. And that’s when it hit me. You know what I mean right? At some point going toward autumn, something changes in the air, it’s the color, the smell and little things that make you aware of the fact that summer is over and autumn is moving in.

Even now, after having the wettest summer in history (and that means something from a country with plenty of rain to begin with) you can still tell the difference. The funny thing is that you need a sunny day to be able to sense it. Rainy days don’t work.

Naturally, because it was sunny and bright today, I wanted to make a salad. My photo shoot of the day was cancelled this morning so I had a little spare time and what better way to spend it then by being outside and eating this delicious salad featuring one of my favorite ingredients; couscous.

Couscous salad with roquefort and corn

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Serves	1
Prep time	10 minutes
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Misc	Serve Cold

Ingredients

• 75g Couscous
• 75g roquefort
• 150ml Chicken stock
• 5 pieces radishes
• 3 tablespoons corn
• 20g alfalfa

Dressing

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• salt
• 3 leaves mint (Chopped finely)
• pepper

Directions

Put the couscous in a bowl and bring the chicken stock to the boil. Obviously if you want to use vegetable stock that is possible too. That would also make this a vegetarian dish. Leave this to stand for about 4 minutes or per package instructions

Once the couscous is cooked, add the corn, chopped radishes and crumbled roquefort to the couscous and stir.

Make a dressing with the olive oil, lime juice, chopped mint and salt and pepper. You need only a tiny bit for the salad and it even tastes good without using the dressing at all. I just find it difficult to mix and taste dressing with teaspoon measurements. You can always use the dressing for something else later if you have leftover (and you will have leftovers)

Put the couscous on a plate and drizzle a little of the dressing on top. Finish your dish with a bit of alfalfa on top and some lamb's lettuce around the couscous. Enjoy!

Note

Delicious recipe that is perfect for a quick lunch and can be adapted to suit your taste quite easily. Use a different kind of cheese such as feta or halloumi if you prefer

It’s delicious and you can easily substitute the roquefort for a lot of other salty cheeses, such as feta or hmmm fried halloumi cubes. I actually wanted to do this with halloumi but that is hard to find in Almere (if anyone knows of a place in Almere then let me know!) so I used roquefort and that was delicious!

Here are some other couscous recipes I made:

Couscous salad

Couscous salad with feta and basil

Hoisin chicken with couscous and asparagus

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• Mediterranean couscous and lentil salad
• Greek salad
• Orzo with feta, tomatoes and dill
• Grilled asparagus with grilled halloumi
• Quinoa, feta and walnut salad

Couscous salad

While I have made couscous salad before, this was more or less the lean version of the one I did before. I was just reading the other recipe and realizing it’s really not that much different, but ok… it definitely has less oil in it!

Yesterday we had a really nice evening. We went out for dinner at Sensus in Almere with friends and afterwards we were gonna be watching the new Harry Potter movie! I am a big Harry Potter fan. Have been since the beginning too, before the whole hype began. The dinner was good. It’s a restaurant with an international kitchen and you basically order small dishes. Four of those make up a ‘regular sized’ meal. I had halibut (which was not so good, as it was overcooked and too salty), feta with chili and watermelon with pickled raisins and a little asparagus tart with parmezan. The last was absolutely my favorite and while the other two dishes weren’t that bad some of the combinations were really weird. I like sweetness with feta but watermelon was just a weird combination plus the fact that the melon was not really ripe, didn’t help either… If you sum it up it actually doesn’t sound like a very good meal, but it wasn’t so bad really. The people there are very friendly which can be a nice chance here in Holland, as you do get a lot of bad service in some restaurants.

And dessert was lovely too. Ok, ok, I know I am supposed to be on a diet, but to compensate for dinner I had been really active the entire day. Started with a spinning class in the morning. I think I can honestly say I have never been sweating so much as that morning! It was warm and humid outside and we never spin with the airconditioning on, since one of our group is allergic to the airconditiong-air.. ( ) The door to outside was open, but it was a vigorous lesson and combined with the humidity…. Pfftt… On top of that I had also cleaned the house in the afternoon, so that should make up for at least some of the meal. Back to normal today anyway!

After dinner we headed over to the cinema, which is a very short walk away. I was glad I had gotten tickets the day before as the lines in front of the register were looooonnggg! You have to know that while we have a huge cinema, it tends to be rather empty most of the times. So to hear that they had Harry Potter playing in three of the rooms (out of 6 or and all three were completely packed, that was amazing.

There was some confusion over chairs (isn’t there always?) before the movie started and they actually stopped the previews to sort it out. This was an extra show anyway so they weren’t so much on a timeschedule as normal. Once it was all sorted we could finally watch the movie we had all been waiting for so long.

I won’t be telling you anything about the movie, to not spoil the surprise if you haven’t seen any of it! I liked the movie, but there was a little less action then I had thought there would be. I have read all the books, so that helps in piecing the story together, as there were a bit too many things that remained a mystery. Tom, as well as our friend Peter, had not read the book and then it’s rather difficult to understand why certain things are happening. In addition to that, Peter had only seen the first movie (not really a Potter fan, but he came along for the ride and because Mary (his wife) loves it) so that made it double hard!

Despite all that I loved it and thought it was another brilliant movie. The scenes and special effects are amazing. And I can’t believe how much those kids have grown!! In preparation for the new movie, Tom and I had been watching the first ones this week and then it’s even more obvious how the little kids have now become so big!

Anyway, it was fun and if you haven’t seen it yet… GO!!

Back to food…

Here is the recipe for my lunchsalad of today!

Couscoussalad with tomatoe and cucumber

40 gr couscous

1/3 cucumber

2 tomatoes

lemonjuice, about 2 tablespoons

parsley

cilantro

Ham or chicken (if you like)

Prepare the couscous according to package instructions. Chop the cucumber and tomatoes in small cubes. Once the couscous is done, loosen it up with a fork and let it cool down. Add the tomatoes and cucumber and season with salt, pepper and the lemon juice. Add the chopped parsley.

If you like you can add some chicken or ham into the salad. I used ham as that is what I had leftover in the fridge, but I think this would have been brilliant with feta or smoked chicken. (or both) You can also ad a splash of olive oil into it, which would probably have made it a little juicier but in the light of losing weight I opted not to.

Add cilantro just before serving.

Delicious and light lunch!

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Couscous salad

Can anyone tell me what Bulghur is? I was supposed to make the above recipe with Bulghur but – ofcourse – could not find it, so had to exchange it with couscous. My feeling is that the two are a lot alike, as it tasted quite good with the couscous.

I was actually really really hungry. Tom had to leave at 7 am this morning and I always get up at the same time (which was 6 am) so by noon I had been up for 6 hours and that kind of makes you hungry!
I’m actually lying now; I went back to bed as soon as he was gone and slept for another hour… But I hate that!
Once I have been awake I should stay awake. Going back to sleep always makes me feel like a zombie afterwards. It’s the same as taking an afternoon nap. I simply cannot do that; even though I might want to at times, but I just feel more tired then I did before sleeping! It eventually passes away (usually after taking a shower) but in general I really don’t like to do that.
This morning was no exception but I just felt that going to work at 7 in the morning was… well… simply too early!

Anyway, I’ve been approving (and mostly rejecting) photos in the morning for one of the stockagencies and my god, I sometimes cannot believe what crap people are sending in. Honestly; what are they thinking??
I won’t go into any details, but trust me if I say that it is sometimes even hard to tell what the photo is supposed to be.

I’m gonna be busy for the rest of the week so this is the last of the lunch-photos for this week. I have an appointment at a catering company I did some work for a year or two ago, so that will probably result in some work. I need to drop of some photos at one of the locations I have used, which… damn.. I left in the studio I know realize..
And I have a workshop to give and prepare on saturday. Plus ofcourse lots of work to catch up with. Still loads of photos I have to edit.

Here is the recipe for the Couscous salad!
(serves 2)

150 gr Bulghur (or couscous)
100 gr cherry tomatoes
1,5 tsp cumin powder
100 gr feta
2 tbsp of chives, chopped
bunch of basil leaves
olive oil
1/2 lemon

Put the bulghur in a bowl and mix with the cumin powder. Pour boiling water over it untill the bulghurt is just under the water. Cover with something and leave to soak up the water for about 10 minutes.
In the meantime; cut the cherry tomatoes in quarters, chop the chives and make cubes out of the feta.
Mix the feta, cherry tomatoes and the herbs in a bowl and add the bulghur. Mix everything well and sprinkle some olive oil and lemon juice over the salad and voila, you’re done!
Have a healthy lunch!

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• Artichoke and feta tarts – DHSP challenge #7
• Couscous salad with roquefort and corn
• Mozzarella & tomato sandwich with homemade pesto
• Mediterranean couscous and lentil salad
• Salmon tartar: christmas cooking part 2

I can’t really think of many dishes where chicken won’t go with. It must be one of the most versatile meats out there. In fact I think I heard people say they are vegetarian but do eat chicken.. (not that that makes a lot of sense to me, but hey… I am not a vegetarian!)
Actually when I think about it I have been a vegetarian a long long time ago… I was still a student nurse (ok, we’re talking about 25 years ago) and I am not sure why I decided I wanted to be a vegetarian but it must have had something to do with my love of animals. It just wasn’t something that lasted very long. It’s quite hard or at least it used to be quite hard trying to eat vegetarian in everyday life. Now I did like the effect it had on my body. When I started going back to eating meat; the first meal was HEAVY on the stomach like you wouldn’t believe! So it does make a difference, but then I love cooking too much to be restricted by the fact that I cannot eat meat. I still do eat quite a lot of vegetarian dishes (to the dismay of T. who is a real carnivore) or if not I try to eat meat from animals that have been reared in a biological way.

I have in fact been contemplating maybe having two chickens myself. Ever since I did a photoshoot with adorable little chickens (see above) it has kind of played in the back of my head. Ofcourse I know nothing about having chickens myself, so I would have to find that out first and then secondly I would have to convince T. that it would be a good thing. Fresh eggs every day, and some live in the garden… I just think chickens (yes, also the older ones) are cute… It won’t be anytime soon anyway if at all…

How did I get to having chickens while I only wanted to write about my dinner with chicken last night? So much for focus..
Anyway, we had hoisinchicken with couscous for dinner last night and while I was preparing it I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like it, but as it turned out it was very tasty..
Hoisin is rather sweet and it was even more sweet since honey was added into the mix, but if you like that; this is a great dish to try.
Here is the recipe:

HOISINCHICKEN WITH COUSCOUS

4 small skinned chicken fillets
300 gr of couscous
1/2 tsp chinese 5-spices
1/2 tsp gingerpowder
Bunch of asparagus (cut of the wooden ends) and then cut them into 6 cm long bits
1 carrot in small strips
4 tbsp of hoisin sauce
500 ml chickenstock
4 tbsp of honey
arachide oil
coriander leaves
1,5 tbsp of roasted sesame seeds

Bring about 375 ml of chicken stock or bouillon to a boil and add the asparagus and carrot. Let it boil for about a minute.
Put the couscous in a bowl and stir in the ginger and chinese 5-spices. Add the stock and vegetables and cover with a teatowel.

Put the oil in a pan and fry the chicken fillets. Add the hoisin sauce and honey with 4 tbsp of water and leave to simmer for about 6-7 minutes or untill the chicken is done. Pour some of the sauce over the chicken from time to time.
When the chicken is done, stir the couscous with a fork and add the majority of the corianderleaves through the couscous.
To serve put the couscous on a plate and slice the chicken in thick slices and put them on top. Sprinkle with the remainder of the corianderleaves and the sesame seeds.

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• Mexican tortilla wrap
• Another halloumi salad…
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