- Moroccan-style chickpea and vegetable couscous.
Now this is a vegetarian centerpiece,
even meat lovers are gonna wanna try it.
Let's do it.
(light music)
We're gonna start with an eggplant.
So we're gonna trim right here,
and right here.
We're gonna kinda just go around the eggplant,
and remove some of the skin,
but not all of it.
So it's gonna be like a zebra eggplant.
Chop up my eggplant into some cubes.
I belong to the school of
salt, salt, salt, your eggplant
before you cook it,
to give it good flavor and texture,
so I'm gonna do that.
And then you're just gonna toss it around,
and leave this colander in your sink.
Grab a really nice, large pan.
We've got ourselves a zucchini here.
(light music)
Ooh, this is a beautiful squash,
Kate bought me this,
it's really nice.
Just large chunks.
Right here is a sweet pepper,
large chunks.
There we go.
And everything is going in this pan,
which will go in the oven in just a bit.
And an onion.
There we go.
Then some garlic.
We gonna first season with the kosher salt,
because remember,
we've already seasoned the eggplant.
And I'm gonna show you
the eggplant has kinda sweat a little bit,
some beads are showing.
We're gonna wipe it dry,
remove any excess salt.
We're adding this bit in.
And then we're going in with some chickpeas.
Chickpeas, which will give you plant-based protein,
if you're using it as a main dish,
which it's meant to.
About add the flavor party,
starting with ras el hanout.
Loads of warm, delicious flavors.
From there, we're gonna add a little bit of cinnamon.
Telling you warm Moroccan-ish vibes.
And then a little bit of heat from some red pepper flakes.
If it's too hot for you,
use Aleppo-style pepper.
A pinch of black pepper,
and then a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
to bring this party together.
Toss this party together.
Mix, mix, mix.
We're gonna go put this under broil for a few minutes,
watching very carefully,
until we see the tops of these veggies nicely char.
And I didn't miss, I got it.
Meanwhile, let's chop up some apricots.
Let's see.
Ooh!
I like the char.
Okay, beautiful.
Meanwhile, we're gonna add a few more things here real fast.
These are canned San Marzano tomatoes,
basically whole plum tomatoes from a can with their juices.
I like to break 'em up just a tad.
One cup of broth or water,
some grated ginger,
to wake everything up.
Ras el hanout,
just a half a teaspoon,
touch more cinnamon if you like,
a drizzle more extra virgin olive oil.
Mixing this party up a minute here.
(foil crinkling)
In the oven, 30 to 45 minutes.
Let's work on the couscous while the veggies are cooking.
I like to start by toasting it
in a little bit of extra virgin oil.
All you have to do
is add it to the boiling water at the moment,
immediately turn the heat off,
that's right, you don't need to cook it.
And then just cover, leave it alone.
Ten minutes.
We're gonna caramelize our apricots,
and toast our almonds for a beautiful topping
to go on this beautiful vegetable and couscous part.
So the way I love to assemble this beautiful dish
is as a large, big centerpiece for my table.
So grab a platter like so,
or a large plate,
here is my couscous that just sat there for a bit.
What I like to do is fluff it up a little bit.
You can look up my video for how to cook couscous
right here on the channel.
Very easy, and will give you fluffy couscous
every single time.
The idea here is to heap all these veggies
on top of this one big platter of couscous.
Gorgeous, meltingly tender,
juicy veggies tossed in Moroccan-style flavors.
I'm ready to dig into this goodness.
Grab the recipe
for Moroccan-style chickpeas and vegetable couscous
over on TheMediterraneanDish.com.
I will see you later.
Ciao.
Damn that's good.