Couscous with Mushrooms and Mixed Beans

This is another of the Sandi Richard recipes, but one of her vegetarian options. She tries to give a vegetarian version of all her recipes so that if a family is mixed vegetarian/omnivore the same meal can be served to everyone with a few simple changes.

The original recipe was a big nasty looking hunk of ribs with a side of couscous and steamed broccoli. I'm not a particular fan of ribs - too much effort for not enough reward. (I know not everyone shares that opinion, but.) So I decided to try her vegetarian version instead.

The original couscous recipe was a fairly basic thing with mushrooms, tomato, onion and garlic added, but with the changes, it got mixed beans (the can I bought had garbanzo, red kidney, romano, and black-eyed peas), raisins, and salsa as well. It tasted really good, though next time I'll add a bit more salsa. I'm always a bit sceptical about couscous - my first experience with the stuff was a fairly awful (I thought) dish with slices of oranges and green onions that my mom sort of fell in love with and that I couldn't stomach, much as I tried - so it's good to find recipes that I actually like. (And also, one serving of this? 10 grams of fibre. Which is insane. In a good way. But you have to use whole wheat couscous to manage that.)

The side that I made was a slight variation on Richard's recipe, which was not so much a recipe as just instructions on how to microwave steam broccoli. I briefly sautéed garlic and red pepper flakes with the broccoli before steaming it. Ridiculously tasty.


ETA (10/12/07): The couscous is very good as a cold lunch. I might like it better cold than hot, even, but I do tend to like things better cold so anyone else's mileage might vary.