("Dio e Zingaro" by La Municipale Balcanica)
- Hi, I'm Jerry James Stone, and in today's video,
I'm gonna show you how to make a delicious and fun salad.
It's a fig, strawberry, and spinach salad,
but it also has some lemon cucumber and pearl couscous.
So it's kind of like a pasta salad,
except for it's a little bit more vegetable forward
than the typical pasta salad.
I also have some fun storage tips for you, too,
so you can make sure that you store everything properly,
getting the most for your money.
Let's get cookin'.
("Dio e Zingaro" by La Municipale Balcanica)
So the first thing that we're gonna make
is the pearl couscous.
Because we need to cook it,
we want to give it time to cool down
because we're gonna be adding it to the salad
with our fruit and our vegetables,
and we want to have enough time for it to cool properly
so it doesn't cook those items.
This is a salad, after all.
Just go ahead and add the pearl couscous
to a small saucepan, add in your vegetable broth,
and then we're gonna bring that mixture to a boil.
Once it starts to boil,
reduce the heat so it's just a low simmer, cover it,
and let it cook for about 15 minutes.
Now, no peeking.
You just have to let it sit there
and cook on a low temperature for 15 minutes,
and it will just absorb all of that liquid.
Okay, so when it's done cooking, you want to go ahead
and just turn off the heat and remove the cover.
Now, what we want to do is drain off any excess liquid
that was not absorbed by the pearl couscous.
And then we're gonna add in just a little bit of olive oil
to keep it from sticking together.
Once again, it's kind of like pasta,
so we want to prevent it from sticking.
So just add in some olive oil,
mix it till it's completely coated,
all the pearl couscous is completely coated,
and then we're gonna transfer that cooked pasta
to the fridge to let it cool.
Now we're gonna start preparing our salad.
So in your preferred salad bowl or a serving bowl
or a mixing bowl, go ahead and add in your spinach.
So here's the thing.
You probably didn't use all of the spinach
that you purchased.
If it came in a bag,
you're gonna want to store it differently,
and if it came in one of those plastic clamshell things,
that'll work just fine.
So what you want to do is take a container
or the clamshell, if that's what you have,
and take all of the spinach out,
line the bottom and the sides with a paper towel,
and then put the spinach back in,
put the cover on, and put it in the fridge.
By being lined with that paper towel,
it's gonna stop that spinach from going bad quickly.
It will actually last up to a couple weeks this way
if you store it properly.
Okay, so you have your spinach.
So now we're gonna add that cooked but cooled pearl couscous
to our spinach,
and we're gonna do that with also by adding some olive oil,
the remaining olive oil,
and we're gonna mix that completely.
So I'm using this Koroneiki extra virgin olive oil
from Rosenthal Olive Ranch here in California.
First of all, you should always use California olive oil.
It's amazing.
But secondly, this particular varietal,
it's just kind of peppery.
It's really vibrant.
It has sort of some nice herbal notes to it,
so it really just allows the ingredients
that we're adding to this fig and strawberry
and spinach salad to shine.
Check it out.
So just go ahead and salt and pepper the salad to taste,
and now we're gonna add in our lemon juice.
If you're like me and you use a lot of lemons,
I have some great videos
on how to use up the extra parts of a lemon:
everything from making a DIY home cleaner
to making your own lemon pepper.
So be sure to look for that on my channel.
So now it's strawberry time.
So go ahead and add in those sliced strawberries.
Now, just like the spinach,
if you happen to have leftover strawberries,
here's how to store them.
You want to take the remaining strawberries
and wash them in a bath of one part vinegar
and three parts water.
Just wash them in that bath, then take them out,
dry them thoroughly.
This part's very, very important.
You wanna make sure you dry them thoroughly.
And then once they're dry, store them in a firm container,
kinda like with the spinach, you want a good container,
line it with paper towels, put the strawberries in there,
put it in the fridge.
What you're doing is you're removing the bacteria, microbes,
anything that might have been on those strawberries
when they're picked or in transmit.
That's what causes that fruit to deteriorate really quickly.
So by doing this, you kinda kill of that stuff,
and your berries will actually last for weeks,
I promise you.
And here's a fun little food hack.
So if you wanna get your kids to help out
with prepping this salad,
you can actually have them easily remove the greens
and hold the strawberries just using a straw.
Easy as that, right?
So super simple for them to help out, too.
So now we're gonna add in the figs
and the lemon cucumbers,
and just salt and pepper that to taste.
Now, here's the thing about lemon cucumbers.
They don't taste like lemons.
They just are sort of shaped like lemons
and have the same color as lemons,
so that's why they're called lemon cucumbers.
So just go ahead and add in those ingredients.
And then when it's all tossed together,
the salad is ready to enjoy.
It's gonna make about six servings.
The thing about this salad
is it really should be enjoyed immediately.
Figs, once you bring them home from the grocery store,
they only last a couple days, fresh figs,
in the refrigerator.
Once you cut them open,
you've broken the seal and you're on borrowed time,
so this particular salad is not gonna keep very long.
Now, you can kinda make it ahead, sorta, not really.
The thing that you can do
is you can make the pasta part, the pearl couscous,
ahead of time.
Once you cook that, it'll stay fresh in the fridge
for about five days,
and then when you're ready to make the salad,
you can just prep all of the veggies and fruits,
but outside of that,
this really is something that, once you make it,
it's going to, you know, it's not gonna last forever,
so you want to enjoy it immediately.
And that's how you make this delicious fig, strawberry,
and spinach salad.
So hopefully, you enjoy it.
Give it a try.
Let me know what you think.
And if there's something that you want to see,
hey, drop a comment down below.
If you liked this video, give me a thumbs-up.
And also, if you're a first-time viewer, please subscribe.
I release new videos every week.
I'll see you guys next time.
("Dio e Zingaro" by La Municipale Balcanica)
We're gonna add it, along with some vegetable oil.
Nope, not vegetable oil.
So close.