Moroccan · Main
Seven-Vegetable Couscous
- Intermediate
- 70 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a warm current of chile, richness that coats and comforts, settling low and earthy.
Ingredients
- 400g couscous, steamed or good instant
- Vegetables: carrot, turnip, zucchini, pumpkin, cabbage, tomato, onion
- 1 can chickpeas
- Broth: ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, saffron, olive oil
- Raisins, smen or butter, harissa on the side
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
The words inside
Baharat & the Seven-Spice FamilyHarissaCouscous
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the sturdier vegetables in the spiced broth 20 min; softer ones in the final 10. 20 min
- Steam or hydrate the couscous; fluff with butter, grain by grain.
- Mound couscous, crater the top, vegetables in and around.
- Broth over; harissa thinned with broth for those who dare.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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