Couscous Recipes

I was asked recently for some couscous recipes. The only problem is we don't use any, we really just make it up as we go! We have used couscous in place of rice or pasta, in pies with vegetables or for salads. Some favourite experiments have been couscous in a pie with broccoli, cauliflower and cheese sauce and a tabouli-type salad (using couscous instead of cracked wheat). Couscous more regularly appears on our table flavoured with some stock for a quick dinner with steamed vegetables and maybe some tuna.

How to cook Couscous
Use 1 cup of boiling water and 1 teaspoon of olive oil for each cup of couscous. Bring water and oil to boil; remove from heat and add couscous. Stir until mixed and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork (may need to put it back on low heat for a bit if the couscous is still sticking).

From here you're only limited by your imagination... or the contents of your pantry and fridge! If serving couscous as a side dish add some stock powder, lemon juice & pepper, soy sauce or other flavouring to water and oil prior to boiling; or stir through heavier flavourings (e.g. chunky pasta sauce or pesto) after leaving it to stand.

Cheap Tuesdays - Chickpea Enchiladas

As we have been converting to mainly vegetarian meals over the past months, I have been adapting many of the recipes we used to cook. Chickpea Enchiladas is one of the boys favourites and cheap too, especially if you look out for cheap wraps. The original Chicken Enchilada recipe came from our good friend Jenny, who is likely to be disgusted by the lack of chilli in our version!

Chickpea Enchiladas
500mL jar pasta sauce
1/3 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp minced garlic
1/3 cup milk powder mixed with 1 1/4 cups chicken stock (or use a tin cream of chicken soup)
chickpeas (we use a container of our slowcooked chickpeas from our freezer) 
1 medium zucchini, grated
1 large carrot, grated
cheese, grated
corn kernels – 1 can, drained or equivalent frozen
12-16 flour tortillas (I've never actually used tortillas - so far I have used wraps, lebanese bread or large pita breads bought on special instead)

Combine the pasta sauce, chilli, basil and garlic in a large jug and reserve half this mixture in a separate jug or bowl (for topping). Mix milk powder and stock, chickpeas, corn, zucchini, carrot and some cheese into remainder of sauce. Pour or spoon out mixture into each tortilla, roll and place in baking dish. When all tortillas are complete, pour reserved sauce over top and sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.

This does our family of 6 for dinner with leftovers for the kids lunches the next day too. Guess what we're having tonight :)

Baked Fish with Mustard Sauce

I'm not a fish fan but this recipe is awesome... and super easy!

1-2 white fish fillets (we've been using Basa because it doesn't have a strong fish flavour & the price is good)
Vegetables (Broccoli, zucchini, carrot, leek and capsicum are pictured here but we've used all sorts before including potato, sweet potato, pumkin, choko, celery, onion, mushroom, etc so go with whatever you have)

2 tablespoons olive oil

Chop vegetables into small chunks and put in baking dish (I use a large glass Pyrex dish). Rub 1 tablespoon of olive oil all over the vegetables with your hands. Lay fish fillets on top of vegetables and brush lightly with remaining oil. Bake 25-30 minutes at 200C.

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (or any other type of mustard you have)

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup fresh parsley chopped or 1 tablespoon dried parsley

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Whisk together and drizzle over fish when serving.

I did mean to get a finished photo with the sauce and everything but it got eaten before I remembered again! We do a double batch of this to feed the 6 of us.

Cheap Tuesdays - Convenience Vegetarian

Beans, chickpeas and lentils are all nutritious and cheap but take too long to cook to be convenient! The amount of preparation and cooking time involved in vegetarian cooking was probably the biggest hurdle when we first transitioned from mostly meat-based meals. Tinned versions are readily available and cheap, but nowhere near as cheap (or nutritious) as the real thing and, using the brilliance of your slowcooker and freezer, can be just as little effort to use:

Wash them – I do this by pouring the beans, lentils or chickpeas into a strainer and, using a bowl of similar size, fill with water to wash them around in while picking out any dodgy ones so it’s easy to drain them a couple of times. I often leave them to soak in the last lot of water for a bit while I try and catch the wild natives who are supposed to be getting ready for school, but this certainly isn’t a necessary step J
Cook them – Chuck them into the slow cooker pot, add water until the legumes come up to 1/2-1/3 of the water line. If you’re not confident make it 1/3, because you can just drain any excess water when they’re done anyway. Guide to cooking times…
Green/Brown Lentils: Only take about 3 or so hours on low, but I mostly leave them on all day because I’m lazy.
Chickpeas: Low 6-8 hours, again I usually just leave them on all day.
Kidney Beans: Auto 8-12 hours. You could pre-soak them overnight so you don’t have to cook them for so long or to use the low setting but, as you may have guessed, I’m too lazy to do this!
Divide & Freeze them – Turn your cooker off, take the lid off to let it cool for a while (I often do this before I eat dinner and come back once the kid’s night time routine is done). Then I use this strainer-spoon-thing that probably has a real name (but we’re close friends so we use nicknames) to put them into individual containers. I use 1L ones, because that’s what I used to freeze our mince and chicken in, but usually only fill them 2/3 full.
Use them – You can now use them instead of tinned versions running them under some warm water (or getting them out to defrost in the morning), or just chuck them into a meal you are cooking like you would use frozen vegetables. I’ll be adding recipes as I can – the tricky bit is getting a photo of the meals before they’re eaten!

I usually do about 5 (uncooked) cups worth of lentils or chickpeas at a time, which will last us about 6 weeks. Kidney beans we don’t use as often so I only do 3 or 4 cups and that lasts us closer to 2 months.

Slowcooker Lasagne II

I've found that it is very hard to get a photo of food once it is ready to eat in our house! I remembered to take these half way through, but better than nothing?

This is my Slowcooker Lasagne (vegetarian) with a trial of penne pasta this time. Took 30 minutes to get it in the pot. I also used 250g more cottage cheese and used zucchini and frozen asian greens instead of some of the carrot and celery in the processed vegetables, plus a bit more water because the penne created a higher lasagne. Still tasted awesome, although a bit more pasta bakish without the lasagne sheets. Verdict: use lasagne sheets if you have them, but if your cupboard is bare any pasta will do :)

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Thai Curry

 

  

Before                                                                                            After

The slow cooker is my favourite way to cook because you just chuck it all in and then waits patiently for you to eat whenever you're ready. Because I couldn't be bothered buying ingredients specially for cooking and as a family we're trying to eat mostly vegetarian, this is my lazy & vegetarian version of Crockpot Thai Curry Recipe (btw Stephanie's blog is awesome!):

1. No chicken, so add some potatoes and a bit extra sweet potato.
2. No eggplant or capsicums, so use a big zucchini instead.
3. No fish sauce or fresh ginger, so just leave them out.
4. Reduce curry to 1/2 teaspoon for all the wimps in the family (Beans, Sparky & I)
5. Chuck sauce stuff into slow cooker; chop veges and chuck them in.
6. Answer phone a couple of hundred times, because who was trying to get something done anyway!?
7. Put slowcooker on low for 6 - 8 hours.
8. Turn slowcooker off and let it sit while putting rice on to cook.
9. Let's eat!

Time taken to get it in the pot: 20 minutes :)



Slowcooker Lasagne

I found some lasagne sheets the other day and decided to give this recipe for lasagne in a slowcooker a try. I don't seem capable of following a recipe and this was no exception - I think I only managed to use 3 of the same ingredients! As a family of 6 (5 males with endless-pit-stomachs and one female who has a separate stomach specially reserved for lasagne, pizza and hot chips) this would probably make two meals for a smaller.. or less greedy... family.

Ingredients
lasagne sheets (I think I used 12)
pasta sauce  2 x 500mL
cottage cheese 500g
vegetables (I used almost a whole celery, 5 medium carrots, 1 poor old sweet potato, 2 onions,  & a couple of cloves of garlic)
precooked lentils (probably about 3 cups, mine were still frozen)
cheddar cheese
water

Chop or process vegetables (I chucked mine in the processor) and grate cheese. Layer pasta sauce, lentils, vegetables, grated cheese, lasagne sheets (just break them to fit loosely around the crockpot shape, don't worry if they overlap) and cottage cheese spread over the lasagne sheets until close to top of the slowcooker. End the last layer with cottage cheese and sprinkle with a bit more grated cheddar. Add about 1/6 cup of water to each of the sauce jars, put lid on and shake, then pour over top of all layers. Put lid on the slowcooker and cook on Low for 8hrs or High for 4hrs.

I put a bit much water in mine so cooked it on High with the lid off for the last 30 minutes to get rid of the extra moisture. We ate almost as soon as The Man got home from work so I didn't manage to get a picture of it before it disappeared - I didn't even get all the ingredients in this dodgy shot, sorry! It smelled, looked and tasted awesome, so this is going on our regulars list. Next time I'm going to experiment with spiral or penne pasta layers instead of lasagne sheets and I might add another 250g cottage cheese.