The recipe: p324, "Buttered Saffron Couscous"
There's a valid argument that blogging is the preserve of the egotist. After all, who else would deem their thoughts and experiences worthy of broadcast to the wider (and largely uninterested) world?
And while I'm not deluded enough to think that this silly little project has any greater meaning, I can't deny occasionally sneaking a look at the view counts for The Random Kitchen, where it's notable that - while the overall stats are generally steady - the weeks with the less inspiring-sounding recipes do tend to garner the fewest hits.
As such, if you've made it this far, well done to you. Because if we're being honest, this week's selection sounds pretty dull. There's no point in pretending that couscous is exciting in and of itself, though it does an excellent job of soaking up more interesting flavours - and while there's a certain curiosity in the fact that we're encountering a saffron-dominated recipe so soon after the last one, this is ultimately a side dish, and not a particularly thrilling one at that.
Still, the random gods make no distinction between complex main courses and simple sauces, so let's follow the fickle finger of fate and see where it leads us...
The prep: The three main ingredients here are butter, saffron and couscous.
Our cupboards are well-stocked with couscous, quinoa, bulgur wheat and all manner of middle-class wankery, so that's fine. There's butter in the fridge from various recent baking experiments, and the leftover saffron from the aforementioned fish dish is sufficient for my needs today. Hurrah!
The recipe also calls for toasted pine nuts. I can't bring myself to buy them pre-toasted when I can easily achieve a satisfactory end result using the one-egg frying pan whose virtues I extolled here - so that's what I do. Some fresh parsley also needs to come on board, and that, as the great Sir Terry used to say, is about the height of it.
The making: First things first: the recipe calls for the couscous to be soaked in cold water, then spooned "into a wire sieve lined with muslin" and steamed over a pan of boiling water for 35 minutes. Now I know I try to stick to the recipe wherever possible, but things have presumably moved on since this book was published - it's minted cumpkins now, grandad! - and quick-cook couscous with a five-minute soaking time is standard kitchen procedure nowadays.
Granted, the internet cheerfully informs me that the steaming process is not only more authentic, but leads to significantly plumper and more satisfactory grains - but when I read this dire warning of three or four separate steamings lasting the best part of an hour, I hit CTRL+ALT+FuckThatShit and opt for the lazy modern variant instead. Besides, like an illiterate Britain First knucklehead, my house is proudly muslin-free.
In my version of the recipe, then, the saffron strands are mixed with a small amount of freshly boiled water and stirred through the dry couscous along with the toasted pine nuts. The requisite quantity of boiling water is then added and the couscous mixture is covered for five minutes before being fluffed up nicely with a fork.
The original recipe says that 75g of butter should be added at this stage. I assume the extensive steaming process would make the couscous sufficiently hot to melt the butter, whereas this version is obviously slightly less scalding after sitting on the side for five minutes, so I give the butter a quick zap in the microwave before stirring it through.
Finally, the chopped parsley is added along with some salt and pepper, et voilà: a North African side dish via the mean streets (and shortcuts) of South-East London.
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| Spot the ginger pube |
The eating: Given the strong colour of saffron and the already yellowish nature of couscous, I was expecting this dish to offer up something of a visual riot. It's still quite attractive, but it does look a bit monotonous - if I was making it again, I'd use some typical accompaniments like a handful of raisins or a tin of chickpeas to break things up a bit.
Still, it is a side dish, and it pairs well with the stronger offsetting flavours I happen to be using (the Reggae Reggae Sauce that's coating the Foreman-grilled chicken breasts and the chorizo I've deployed to tart up the veg), even if that's primarily a happy side-effect of "we're going on holiday so need to use up whatever's left in the fridge" syndrome.
(Leftover diced carrot and swede, you say? I wonder where that could have come from...)
While a perfectly decent dish, my gut reaction is that the saffron and butter make it a bit rich and overwhelming - so I'm pleasantly surprised when Sam, something of a couscous sceptic, absolutely loves it.
Which makes it all the more galling that the Tupperwared leftovers come to a sticky end when our fridge-freezer decides to ascend to Silicon Heaven during the aforementioned holiday. Bah.
We refrain from claiming the spoiled food on our home insurance - it's mostly 27p packs of sausages from the reduced aisle at Tesco, after all - although considering how expensive saffron is and how often The Random Kitchen seems to want me to use it, I'm starting to think we ought to have...
One-word verdict: Lazy.
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