Lemon and Garlic Giant Couscous Salad


Lemon and Garlic Giant Couscous Salad- a fresh zesty salad, the perfect side dish for your buffet or BBQ.

Jump to Recipe
This giant couscous salad was one of my offerings at a family party. This weekend was supposed to be my husband's birthday lunch at a local restaurant. After all the organising to get everyone in one place at one time, at the last moment we realised it was the local regatta. Chances of finding a parking space for the booking we had made, were very slim, so on Saturday we cancelled and I started a bake/cook-a-thon to make lunch for everyone at home!

I made home-made bread rolls with various fillings, lemon cakes, chocolate cheesecake brownies, home-made houmous, and potato salad with bacon.

I was looking for something that would be suitable as a side dish and would double up for people watching their weight, as we had a couple of guests who were in that mode and I know it's difficult. I love side dishes. I am always attracted to them at BBQs, possibly more than the mains. This time I wanted something fresh and full of veggies to counter-balance the mini meat pies, sandwiches and cake!

This giant couscous salad is just that- fresh, zesty and the perfect dish to have 'on the side'. It's a lovely combination, with the softness of the couscous pearls and the crunch of salad veggies. I got a bit carried away with the catering for the birthday tea, so I have half of the salad left over. I am really looking forward to having it for my work lunch tomorrow.


This recipe is Slimming World Friendly if you leave out the oil- in which case don't make it too far ahead as it will become 'claggy' without the oil.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baked Banana Coconut Porridge

Image
If you're a regular Twitter user you have probably seen the #Teacher5aday tweets that trend regularly. It was borne out of this blog post by Martyn Reah- #teacher5aday which was a call to action to teachers to take better care of themselves and each other, so that they don't burn out, give up the job that they love and contribute to a predicted recruitment crisis. Sadly, the crisis is upon us 18 months later, so it's more important than ever that we look after each other. The hashtag has spawned further related hashtags that you might have seen: #teacher5adayread (encouraging reading for pleasure, not work) #teacher5adaysew, #teacher5adaycook and so on. Then Vicki Vincent (@MissVicki_V) wrote a great blog post about #teacher5adaybreakfast . It was about the importance of us 1) actually making time to have breakfast and 2) trying to make it a healthy one, instead of the usual teacher practice of racing round on an empty stomach and grabbing a biscuit as you fly past the sta...
Read more

Slow Cooker Beef Curry

Image
Curry is probably my favourite takeaway. It's not just the curry and rice, it's all the delicious bits that go with it. Mmmm naan bread! Saag Aloo! Poppadoms! Mango Chutney! Samosa! Bhaji! The problem is wanting to have a bit of everything, but not being able to fit it all in. There's a talent in clever ordering. It's very easy to make a half-decent curry at home. There's a bit more talent required to make a really amazing one. One of my colleagues at work makes spectacular curries and delicious little morsels of Asian goodness as well. I am nowhere near up to that mark! Getting it right is all about the combination of spices. Slow cooking a curry means that you can use cheap cuts of meat and you can leave it cooking without standing over it. Below is my slow cooker beef curry, which freezes well and is full of delicious smells to come home to! I use beef rib trim, which can be hard to get. You can use stewing steak or other humble cuts as well. If you are doing Sli...
Read more

How to make Viennese Whirls

Image
If you watched the Great British Bake Off last week, you'll have seen the group of bakers tackling Viennese Whirls with mixed results. I watched them myself, thinking that it looked pretty difficult. Actually, they are fairly easy if you tackle them with confidence! In today's post, I am going to show you how I got on with making Viennese Whirls using a slightly adapted recipe from The Hairy Bikers and give you some top tips for trying it yourself. So, if you are wondering how to make Viennese Whirls and want to have a go, keep reading! Viennese Whirls are an entirely British creation that get their name from being inspired by Austrian pastries. They are biscuits, very similar to shortbread but with a much lighter texture. What makes them distinctive is the fact that they are piped biscuits in a swirl pattern, which are then filled with buttercream and jam. Usually the jam is strawberry, but you can use whatever your favourite is. I made half with strawberry and half with blac...
Read more