Chickpea & Veggie Couscous

with roasted zucchini, grape tomatoes & feta cheese

Food prep and cooking

Nick:

This was an odd one. The little baggie full of garlic-smoked paprika ("CONTAINS: PAPRIKA") was not actually sealed, so garlic-smoked paprika got all over everything in the bag. This did smell delicious, but I would have preferred actually having it on the food. Also, we got double the amount of tomatoes, so if we got someone else's, uh, sorry. For the actual prep, it was pretty easy - roast the veggies in the oven, make the couscous and combine. I feel like I still don't know what simmering is, because the couscous ended up being done with a considerable amount of water still in the pot. At least we didn't make soup this time!

Katie:

I'm getting a little sick of trying to get tiny, itty bitty thyme leaves off the stem so I can ineffectually chop them. I have discovered I like thyme in the process of trying these meals (full disclosure, we tried two before we started the blog) at least. As Nick said, the prep was easy and straight forward. The pictures on the recipes are really helpful to eyeball if you've gotten the right sort of slice or cube for your veggies.

Post-meal thoughts

Nick:

Very good! Not quite my favorite, but definitely up there. The couscous, roasted chickpeas, and tomatoes all work really well together; one bite with all three on the fork produces a hearty, olive oil-y, Mediterranean flavor that I really enjoyed, and I normally hate tomatoes, so that's really saying something. The zucchini I wasn't as much a fan of; I don't know if it's because the pieces of this were just bigger than the half a grape tomato or what, but I didn't really enjoy the zucchini bites as much. Still, I basically inhaled my food, so I can't really complain. To improve this dish, I would eliminate the zucchini and just make the vegetable part all tomatoes (you know I really enjoyed it if I'm asking for more tomatoes).

Katie:

I really enjoyed this dish. The cumin-herb lemon vinaigrette sauce was very flavorful. I normally don't like chickpeas but they were delicious roasted. I second Nick's thoughts on the zucchini being too large. If we get this recipe again, I'll chunk them up smaller. The feta added an extra layer to the Mediterranean flavor, which made the dish even better.

I hadn't realized how easy it is to roast vegetables before either. I assumed there were some special skills in knowing when they were done, perfecting the seasoning but we literally just put a little seasoning on there, some olive oil, and left them to their own devices in the oven for a while. Who knew! I guess people who know how to cook knew. But now that's me!