Sweet Couscous with Baked Figs & Lebnah

Figs just do the trick for me. They give such an oomph to so many sweet or savoury dishes, taking them to new heights. They should be fresh and ripe to spice up & complement the following dishes:

* figs and prosciutto ruccolla salad

* honeyed fig scones

* sticky cinnamon baked figs with rosewater, labneh & pistachios

* savoury couscous with fig cubes, lemon and chives

* plum & fig  chutney

*labneh with figs, pistachios & honey

..... and many more.

Sweet Couscous with Baked Figs, Honey & Rosewater Labneh

adapted from Wholefood Kitchen by Ross Dobson

Type of cuisine: Moroccan with strong Middle Eastern influences

Ingredients

(for 2 people)

a cup of couscous

1 tbs of (unsalted) butter

2 tbs of honey

1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon

3 fresh figs

(brown) sugar to sprinkle over the figs

------

4 tbs of home-made labneh

1 tbs of condensed milk (or honey)

2 tbs of rosewater

Method 

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees C. 

Wash, halve the figs and place them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle some sugar over them and bake for around 20 minutes. 

Put the butter, honey, cinnamon, and couscous in a large bowl, pour enough hot water over to cover all and cover tightly with clingfilm or a lid. 

Mix the lebnah with honey/condensed milk and rosewater and refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Return to the couscous and fluff it up with a fork and cover again. 

When the figs are soft & caramelized, take them out of the oven.

Serve in small bowls as in the picture above. 

This is a healthy and delicious option if you don't want to bake a cake. As a variation of this dish, in case you don't have figs, you could marinate sultanas and jumbo raisins in honeyed water with orange blossom water and mix them with couscous & chopped pistachios. 

Watermelon Smoothie & My Obsession w Instagram

We are blessed with superb September weather here in Romania. It's still quite hot and there is a clarity in the sky that you can experience only at the beginning of autumn. Watermelons are ripe and crack open easily under the gentle rip of the knife. 

Watermelons are plentiful and unless I make the most of the season while I can, I know will pine over them all winter... 

How does a salad in a glass sound to you? Because it makes me drool just thinking about it. :)

The idea came to me while I was still in bed this morning daydreaming about breakfast, when I remembered a delicious Moroccan Watermelon Salad that I had read about on one of my favourite foodblogs. 

Watermelon Smoothie with Orange Blossom Water, Buttermilk & Mint

(serves two people)

inspired by Delicioasa's Moroccan Watermelon Salad

La Vie en Rose...by Instagram

Type of cuisine: Morrocan


Preparation time: 2 minutes (really)

Just blend a thick slice of seedless watermelon, a cup of buttermilk or low-fat yogurt with a spoonful of orange blossom water and roughly chopped mint.  It's the easiest thing in the world. and certainly one of the healthiest things you can think of.
Have you noticed that I didn't mention brown sugar nor honey?  No need to use them as the melon is naturally sweet.  :)
The orange blossom water stands out beautifully and takes you to distant lands. What a great way to start the weekend, isn't it?

PS. The photo is taken with Mike's iPhone and treated with Instagram- the nicest app ever *love* as it makes taking photos so much fun. Instagram gets the best of me :)) xoxo

Couscous with Mint, Parsley & Pomegranate Seeds

Lunch is that time of the day when people eat to recharge their batteries to keep them going till they get back home. This is why restaurants offer special lunch deals and service must be super fast. No fuss, no delays, no room for mistakes. A quick lunch doesn't have to compromise on the quality nor the taste of the food, so fast food as we know it shouldn't even be an option.

Part of Moroccan heritage, couscous is a very versatile grain which is obtained by steaming and drying cracked wheat. Fortunately, pre-cooked couscous is readily available in most supermarkets and local corner shops. I prefer medium-grain couscous which is coarse and when cooked, looks like tiny pearls. 

Couscous with Mint, Parsley & Pomegranate Seeds

Type of cuisine: Moroccan/Fusion

Cooking time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

a small cup of couscous

a handful of chopped parsley

2 branches of chopped mint

a knob of butter

lemon juice

a pinch of salt

pomegranate seeds

crushed pistachios (optional, for decoration)

Preparation

Boil water in the kettle. Chop the parsley & mint finely. (Crush the pistachios using the blade of a big knife).

Method

Put the couscous in a large bowl and add the salt (to taste) and the butter.  Pour the hot water to cover the grain and cover the bowl with a suitable lid - this way the steam and the heat wiill seal inside the bowl and make the couscous fluffy. 

After 5 minutes, remove the lid and with a fork fluff the couscous, then add the chopped mint and parsley and squeeze some lemon juice and mix again.

To decorate sprinkle some pomegranate seeds on top and halas (that's it, in Arabic), that's your lunch. :) 

Because I was in a mad rush, I had actually forgotten about the pistachios, but normally I would add some pistachios on top. It gives the dish a crunchy texture. The parsley and the lemon juice also pair very well .

Fresh mint can also be replaced with spring onions, if it's their season.

My lunch basically consisted of last night's roast chicken with lemongrass and the couscous as a side dish. SUPER SCRUMPTIOUS. 

Couscous is ideal as a bento type of lunch.  If you have a microwave at the office, you can stick it inside for a minute and you'll have a lunch that will definitely make your colleagues drool.... Enjoy :)

Green Couscous with Hemp Seeds & Raw Garlic

I discovered Yotam Ottolenghi and his dashing, fresh, crisp and delicious recipes in the Life & Style section of The Guardinan, or to be more precise, in his "The New Vegetarian" column and that was love at first site & bite :)

I am not a vegetarian myself, but I eat a lot of veggies - I prefer them raw, grilled, or stir-fried, sometimes oven-baked, but hardly ever boiled "Eastern European style", if you know what I mean. I love simple, yet surprising combinations, light and healthy with a touch of wild, intense, and nutty flavours. So you can imagine why I became a feverish reader of both the column and the blog and I couldn't wait till I received Plenty and Ottolenghi The Cookbook by courier. So excited :) - my heart was racing flicking though the two cookbooks, being totally wowed & overwhelmed, and saying to myself: what an amazing idea, this is great fusion, this is a delicious dish, I'm drooling :))

Hope you'll be drooling now as well as I am about to share with you my take on Green Couscous from Plenty.

Green Couscous with Hemp Seeds & Green Garlic

Adapted from Plenty

Type of cuisine: Fusion/Vegetarian/Low Fat


Cooking time: less than 15 minutes

Ingredients

3/4 cup of medium-grain couscous

4 tbs of hemp seeds

1 small onion

3 spring onions

2 green garlic shoots

a small bunch of fresh mint leaves

a bunch of parsley

1/2 tsp of freshly ground cumin 

pistachios

a pinch of (Camargue) salt

extra virgin olive oil

hot water 

Preparation

Put the couscous, the hemp seeds and the ground cumin in a large bowl, sprinkle some salt and drizzle some olive oil over, then cover with boiling water and set aside. 

Fry the chopped onion until it turns slightly golden. 

Place the mint, parsley, spring onions, green garlic, and some olive oil in the food processor to make the herb paste. Keep some parsley and spring onions aside to chop up later for decoration.

Method

Add the green paste, the fried onion and some crushed pistachios to the fluffy couscous, mix, season with extra salt, if necessary, and decorate with the remaining greens. 

Couscous is not only a staple food throughout the Northern African continent and the Middle East, but it is also a staple and a fixture in my kitchen. It's so versatile and playful that I am constantly surprised to discover new combinations all the time: classic tagine with couscous, chickpeas and sweet roasted vegetables, couscous with butter, parsley and pomegranate seeds, sweet couscous with light agave syrup and caramelized figs, and the list can go on. Couscous is simple, healthy and so very gourmet that it has - in time - earned a diva status in my kitchen.

Here are some beautiful zoomed-in photos that I have taken for you from Plenty and The Cookbook that will probably pop out of the screen and make you ... so hungry :)