Israeli Couscous Salad

I finally found Israeli couscous today, in the surprising environs of my local Bulk Barn. Actually more of a pasta than a grain, I’d been wanting to try it for a while.

With cucumbers and cherry tomatoes still the freshest thing going, I didn’t hesitate to assemble this salad to go with grilled lamb chops.

Israeli Couscous Salad

2/3 cup Israeli couscous
1 cucumber
1 cup cherry tomatoes
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring 4 cups of salted water to a boil. Add the couscous grains, stir, and let boil for 8 minutes. They should still be slightly chewy, but soft.
2. While the couscous is boiling, quarter and slice your cucumber, and quarter or roughly chop the cherry tomatoes. (It all depends on how hungry you are, and whether you’re serving it to company.)
3. Throw the cucumber and tomatoes in a bowl, top with the olive oil and vinegar, and give a good stir.
4. When it’s done, drain the couscous and add it immediately to the rest of the salad ingredients. Top with pepper and serve.

Like a pasta, Israeli couscous isn’t exactly a health food on its own. Half a recipe above costs 242 calories, or 4 Weight Watchers points. However, if it convinces you to eat more cucumber and tomato, I think that’s a good thing!

Black Bean and Summer Vegetable Salad

Black Bean and Summer Vegetable Salad

My next-door neighbour has been handing me cucumbers all month. One day we also got a dozen ears of corn, and recently cherry tomatoes have started coming over the fence from her too.

We ate this on its own as a light meal – the black beans add protein, and the corn is a starchy vegetable, so it’s almost complete on its own.

Black Bean and Summer Vegetable Salad

1/2 a cucumber
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 ear corn, cooked (mine was leftover from a batch of barbecued ears)
1/2 can black beans
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

1. Chop the cucumber and tomato into quite small pieces.
2. Cut the corn kernels off the cob and add to the other vegetables.
3. Rinse and drain the black beans.
4. Add the olive oil and vinegar, and stir to combine. Add a little salt and pepper if you like.

I’m sure later in the season I’ll start adding herbs and spices to perk up the taste, but right now it tasted so fresh and delightful without that I wasn’t even tempted.

Half the recipe gives you 2 servings of vegetable for only 225 calories, or 4 Weight Watchers points. You’re also getting 7.5g of fibre, a good push towards your daily requirement. You can leave out the oil to bring it down to 185 calories and 3 points, but olive oil is good for you in small amounts like this.

Fresh Tomato Soup, and other supper goodness

Supper tonight was, I have to admit, all the left-overs from last week’s farmer’s market haul. I had to make room for the new stuff!

The beans were the leftovers from lunch, served cold. New potatoes were simply washed, quartered, and boiled; top them with a little butter, salt and pepper at the table if you like.

The soup pulled it all together and added the bulk of the meal’s protein, thanks to the last of the cheddar cheese curds from the Thornloe cheese factory I picked up during our August long weekend trip there.

Fresh Tomato Soup

2 tsp olive oil
2 gloves garlic
1/2 small onion
8 or 10 fresh Roma tomatoes, chopped (mine worked out to 3.5 cups when chopped)
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp dried basil (by all means substitute 1 tbsp fresh – I didn’t have any)
2 tbsp flour in 1/4 cup cold water
1/4 cup cheese curds

salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a largish pot and add the garlic, minced, and the onion, chopped up.
2. Add the stock, tomatoes, and basil, and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.
3. Use an immersion blender, if you have one, to blend the soup in the pot. Otherwise you can use your blender, but you should let it cool a bit first, and then put it back in the pot to warm back up.
4. Mix the flour into the water until there are no lumps, and add to the soup. Let simmer for five minutes – it should thicken up a little.
5. Divide the cheese curds between two serving bowls. Ladle half the soup into each bowl.

The beauty of the cheese curds is that they melt into those lovely toothsome strings that you get with proper poutine. You can, of course, just slice up some cheddar and add that instead – mozzarella would probably be good too.

Each serving is 193 calories, or 4 Weight Watchers points. You get an impressive three servings of vegetables for that.

EDIT:  It’s Saturday now, and I just heated up the leftover soup from last night; the two servings were a bit too generous, even for us.  Even though my usual reaction to “stir in a spoonful of plain yogurt” is “ugh, no thanks”, I just did it; and it’s great!  It adds some creaminess and adds a bit of a tang, without adding that overpowering plain-yogurt tang.  I do wish that I’d peeled my tomatoes, though – I hate those little bits of rolled-up skin.

Salade Nicoise

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that green beans and new potatoes are available at the same time at the farmer’s market; Salade Niçoise must have come about for that very reason.

To keep picky eaters happy, when serving or packing this for a picnic, we pack each ingredient in its own little container. It makes for a dizzying array of little yogurt containers alongside the bigger potato bowl, but it’s fun for everybody to assemble their own salad. This is a nice light-tasting lunch that still keeps you full for the afternoon, thanks to the added protein and carbohydrate.

If you have kids you won’t eat tuna or eggs, you might want to give them some cheese to round out the meal. If you have lettuce you’re trying to get rid of, you can add it to the salad, or if you’re serving it to company at home, it does look nice to lay everything out on a bed of lettuce leaves.

Salade Niçoise

2 pounds potatoes
1 pound green beans
4 tomatoes
small chunk of red onion
4 oz black olives
2 cans chunk tuna, packed in water
4 eggs, hard boiled
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste

1. Prep the potatoes; if they’re new, wash and cut them in quarters; if not, peel them and cut into largish bite-size chunks. Prep the beans; cut off the tops and cut them into roughly bite-size chunks too. (You’ll sense a bite-size theme here, soon, if you hadn’t already).
2. I can’t stand to use three pots for a lunch, so if you have a pretty good idea of how long you want your potatoes and beans to cook, try what I do: put the potatoes on to boil, then once the beans are prepped, but them on top. They should be mostly out of the water, and steaming rather than boiling. I haven’t tried boiling the eggs along with the potatoes yet, but I think that would work too.
3. Cut up the tomatoes into smallish pieces and the red onion into very small pieces. Peel the eggs and quarter them.
4. Mix the olive oil, vinegar, garlic, mustard (a baby-food jar is good if you’re to picnic). Add salt and pepper to taste, or let everyone season their own salad. Mix enough dressing in with the cooked, drained potatoes to moisten them.

When it’s picnic time, give everyone a bowl and a fork. Open and drain the tuna, and open all your various containers. Pour dressing on the individual bowls once the salads are assembled to everyone’s liking.

This serves 4, and can easily be cut in half or scaled up for the number of people you’re feeding. For each serving, you’ve earned 2 “real” vegetable servings and 2 starchy vegetables, for 400 calories. As written it’s about 8 Weight Watchers points, which is a lot for lunch; cut that down to 6 by measuring yourself just 6 ounces of potato and skipping the hard-boiled egg. If you hate olives, save yourself 1 point by omitting them too.