Spinach and Onion Couscous ~ page 104

I just started using couscous a few years ago--I don't know if it has been around forever, and I just didn't notice, or why I didn't know about it. Not sure. But it is my new quickie side dish. I especially like it in the summer, when I don't want to heat the kitchen up, but I don't want cold salad either.

Here are two kinds of couscous that comes in a box. Carissa just recently told me about the one on the right--called giant pasta pearls. I found it at the health food store. (Couscous is just pasta--tiny balls of it that don't have to cook, they just kind of rehydrate in hot liquid for 5 minutes.) Carissa's sister-in-law, Holly, made this recipe with the giant couscous for a crowd of probably 50 or more people for her brother Andrew's rehearsal dinner. I dropped by and got to taste it, and it was great! I really liked the large size of the couscous. One nice thing about this recipe, is that it can sit out for a long time, and is still very good at room temperature--which makes it wonderful for a buffet dish or pot luck. But today, I used the regular size couscous for this recipe. (The large size does need to cook longer, so that needs to be factored into this recipe...)

You can do this whole recipe in a skillet. I sautéed the onion and garlic, then piled in my fresh spinach. I cooked the spinach for about a minute till it wasn't overflowing the pan...

Then just dump in the dry couscous and the hot chicken broth (which I made with boiling water and granular chicken bouillon) and cover the pan and remove from heat. After 5 minutes, fluff with a fork and stir in the lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper. You probably wont need extra salt because chicken broth is always very salty on its own. Pretty fast, huh?

Here is a vegetarian meal with Spinach and Onion Couscous along with Squash Dressing, just one page over in the cookbook. If my garden tomatoes were ripe (they will be in about 1 week!) I would have just served this recipe along with a plate a fresh sliced tomatoes, and called it a light summer meal.