Last night I spent like an hour and a half making this recipe for a “Tunisian pepper and potato couscous.” This was another of the recipes in Deb’s book – there are 1600, so God knows if I’ll ever try them all - and while I had fun cooking since BF wasn’t home and I’m not particularly good with sock puppets, it was a difficult and unusual recipe to cook, with many stops and starts. Since I can’t just reprint the recipe here without Deb’s permission, I’ll tell you what I did in steps. I did all of this while listening to Nevermind, which put an ah-memories smile on my face. (Ironic, perhaps.) Such a great record.
- Peeled and sliced boiling potatoes into sixths, for some reason.
- Chopped up four cloves of garlic. The recipe called for six, but I automatically adjust the recipe down, always, because the garlic they sell at our Giant is for some reason more potent than that on any cooking show or in any recipe book, and I’ve finally figured out how to compensate for it.
- Gathered mint and red pepper flake.
- Chopped an onion, of course, and put olive oil in a pan, of course.
- Threw all that stuff in there with two tablespoons of tomato paste, thus FINALLY USING UP the jam jar full of tomato paste that’s been in the fridge getting used up since I stupidly bought a giant can of tomato paste thinking it was tomato sauce and we had to use it bit by bit. And you can’t keep tomato anything inside a metal can, so it migrated to the jam jar and that brings us to now.
When that started to cook, the smell was un. believable. Never had I smelled anything quite like that combination before. Mint is so awesome. It had to cook for about ten minutes, and meanwhile I
- Chopped up five bell peppers of different colors,
- Drained and rinsed a can of chickpeas,
- Attempted to seed and chop four tomatoes which I’d blanched and peeled. I am not very good at seeding tomatoes. I’ve yet to meet someone who cares about errant tomato seeds here and there, though, so I guess it’s okay for now,
- And gathered couscous and jarred harissa. Everyone says you have to make your own harissa, but the flavor in this jar of it that I got from Whole Foods is so distinctive and wonderful that I don’t know if I ever will. Also, there are preservatives in this jar; since you can’t use up a batch of harissa in a month, I’m perfectly happy for those preservatives to keep my jar fresh in the fridge for as long as it keeps not growing mold.
I added the chickpeas, peppers, and some salt, and turned up the heat to saute for a couple of minutes. I had to watch it closely to see that it didn’t stick; some of the potatoes and onions had browned and stuck to the bottom of the pan during their own private saute (which added a little bit of breakfast hash brown smell to the other flavors, slobber), and there was a little yumminess building in the bottom of the pan.
When the saute was done, I added the tomatoes and 3 cups of water. The heat went down to low (eeeeventually) and it simmered for 20 minutes, while I cleaned up and checked my email and got the couscous assembly ready. I was getting ready to toast the couscous in oil, which I’d never done with couscous.
Then, said the recipe, “remove 2 cups of the liquid for the couscous and set the vegetables aside.” Oh. Okay. Have you ever tried to “remove” two cups of liquid from a simmering pan full of vegetables without getting any little bits of onion or garlic or tomato in there? Yeah, neither have I. (It was way too much in the pan to think about straining or anything like that.)
I muddled through it, without burning myself too badly, and combined the broth with the harissa in a little pan, which simmered while I toasted the couscous, and then the broth went in the couscous and on went the lid. There was fluffing, further water-adding, and then it was READY.
You guys, it was totally worth it. Delicious, flavorful, spicy, perfectly tender peppers and nice soft potatoes, unbelievably tasty couscous, just an amazing meal.
The problem is, I have enough of it to feed all of you. Of course it’ll do for lunches, but vegetable dishes are usually best right then and there…especially those with peppers in them.
While we’re on the subject of food, have you ever tried Kombucha? It’s a kind of fermented tea, Chinese, and I learned after buying a bottle of it at the health food store the other day that it’s GODDAMNED DISGUSTING. I drank it all throughout preparing this anyway because (according to the bottle, but not Wikipedia) it’s stupidly good for you, but I will be quite glad when the bottle’s gone and I never have to drink it again.




