Date I made this recipe:
September 25, 2016 – in honor of the passing of summer and the start of
fall (Thursday, September 22, 2016)
Delia Smith's Summer
Collection – 140 recipes for summer by Delia Smith
Published by BBC Books
ISBN: 0-563-36476-9; © 1993
Purchased at Barnes and Noble (Used Books), Roseville , MN
Recipe: Roasted Vegetable Cous-cous Salad with
Harissa-style Dressing – p. 108
Well this is hilarious:
I've cooked from two of Delia Smith's Books – Winter Collection and now Summer
Collection as a nod toward seasonal beginnings and endings.
I used Delia Smith's
Winter Collection cookbook in 2015 to celebrate the beginning of spring, a
season I am not especially fond of but it's better than fall or winter. Since winter officially ended on March 20th
that year, I thought I'd sneak in one more winter recipe before calling it a
day. I am humored by the fact that it
snowed in Minneapolis on March 22nd that year showing us once again
that Mother Nature has her own timetable.
(PS—I made a "Black Bean Chili with Avocado Salsa" from that
cookbook and wrote the blog on March 24, 2016.
Hopefully, I posted it shortly thereafter as I sometimes fall behind: www.collecdtiblecooking.blogpsot.com
– Label: Delia Smith)
Apparently, I was thinking on the same lines this year as I
made a dish from Delia Smith's Summer
Collection a few days after summer officially ended (September 22, 2016)
and autumn began.
I do not like autumn, or "fall," or whatever you
want to call it. I do not like it at
all. And I am already sick and tired of
pumpkin "everything." And when
the leaves start to turn, so does my mood as I experience – annually – what I
call my Fall Funk.
But summer, dear, sweet, warm summer, is my favorite season
and if I could bottle up all the hot summer days for use later, I would. I would also be very rich.
This summer was not especially hot or humid, nor was it a
miserable summer – in fact, it was okay.
Actually, let's call it "satisfactory," shall we? It was generally sunny so that was good, with
temperatures that pleased most of the residents of this state but not
necessarily me as the warmer, the better.
If I had a dime for every person who said "Oh, I love this weather. It's 75 degrees, not too hot, and there's a
breeze," I'd be as rich as if I bottled up sunshine.
Look, summer in Minnesota
is short. Sure, it runs you classic three months, but those three months go by in a flash and then the minute
Labor Day is upon us, we head into what I consider "chilly"
temperatures – 60's and 70's. I'm
greedy. I want "plenty of sunshine coming my way, Zip-ah-de-doo-dah,
zip-a-de-ay." (From the song, Zip-ah-de-doo-dah,
featured in the 1964 Disney movie, Song
of the South.) But plenty of
sunshine has been replaced by plenty of rain as we are now being treated to
rain deluges on almost a daily basis. I
am tired of being under a raincloud all day long.
And so I am pretending that summer has not ended and so
decided to make a summer dish from Delia's cookbook. But hilariously – or maybe cosmically –
today's recipe includes roasted vegetables, something I associate with
fall. I guess I'm straddling both worlds
with this one.
Many of Delia's recipes though, contain roasted "something"
and I came very close to making her "Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable
Lasagna" (she spells it "lasagne"—what is with the Brits and
their pronunciation and spelling?) but came screeching to a halt when I
realized the sauce was a white sauce instead of tomato sauce.
As a general rule my people (my Sicilian family) do not
"do" white sauce. Do not. And
so I didn't.
Other recipes that got bounced were a "Strawberry
Granita" that is best reserved for hot summer days when a cooling
refreshment is needed, nor did I make any of the ice cream recipes even though
they sounded delicious.
I might have made one of her main dishes had they not
included curry paste and chilies, (Yes, I am a wuss when it comes to heat) or
fish which I generally do not like but I know others who do, so please feel
free to roam about the cabin of this cookbook.
And if you want to stay loyal and true to the book's titled "Summer Collection" and want to wait until
next summer to do so, who am I to tell you no?
But if you are like me and are hanging on to summer with all
fingernails, then give this book and this recipe a whirl. It sounds more complicated than it is and you
will need to roast the vegetables, the recipe for which is included on page 110
of the book with the lasagna recipe, but which I will break down for you. After the vegetables are done, the next steps
are really easy.
A word though, about the salad dressing: if you don't tone it down like I did, it will
be super hot. Scorching, in fact. This dressing is used in North African
cooking and is made with chili peppers, paprika and olive oil. This recipe uses a few other ingredients but
then I tweaked them some more. One can
never be too careful.
I also decided to add some protein and poach a chicken
breast and it was a delicious addition although you don't have to follow suit
if you don't want to.
So that's it for summer and I am counting the days already
until we meet again. Although summer
does not start until June, I'm hoping we see signs of spring/summer (our spring
here is incredibly brief) around May 1st. And so with high hopes, I have marked off my
calendar and will have you know that as of today, September 26, we have 217
days to go until May 1. Works for me.
Roasted Vegetable
Cous-Cous Salad with Harissa-style Dressing
- serves 4 as a main course or 8 as a starter
For the roasted vegetables (full recipe)
1 lb cherry tomatoes, skinned (Ann's Note: I peeled one
tomato before calling it a day. Too much
work, folks, too much work!)
1 small aubergine (eggplant) (Ann's Note: I substituted a
very small Japanese eggplant for this recipe and it worked great.)
2 medium courgettes (zucchini) (Ann's Note: the author is
British thus the "aubergine" and "courgettes.")
1 small red pepper, de-seeded and cut into 1-inch squares
1 small bulb fennel, cut into 1-inch squares
1 large onion, sliced and cut into 1-inch squares
2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
For the Cous-cous
10 oz medium cous-cous (Ann's Note: I used "regular" cous-cous. I hope that was okay.)
18 fl oz vegetable stock (Ann's Note: I don't keep vegetable stock on hand but did
have chicken broth so I used that instead.)
4 oz firm goat's cheese
Salt and freshly milled black pepper
For the salad
1 large bag of mixed salad leaves. Ann's Note:
the author suggests a salad mix of lettuce, coriander leaves, flat-leaf
parsley and rocket. I used mix greens that
had none of the above—and lived to tell about it!)
For the Dressing
4 fl oz extra virgin olive oil
1 rounded teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 heaped tablespoons tomato puree (Ann's Note: I put a few of the roasted tomatoes in a
Cuisinart – ta da!)
1 tablespoon lime juice (approximately 2 limes)
To garnish
1 tablespoon black onion seeds
Ann's Note: I made half of the salad dressing recipe but
even then, ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper was too much. To offset the heat, I added some brown
sugar. I also cut down on the cumin and
then added lemon juice which I had on hand, rather than the lime juice which I
did not.
Okay, so to pull this thing together, first roast your
vegetables. The author set her oven to
425, I made mine 400. The only
difference was that I had to cook them a little longer at the slightly lower
temperature. I also kept an eye on
things as the last thing I wanted was for my half-batch of vegetables to become
charcoal briquettes! My total cooking
time was about 60 minutes. Let the
vegetables cool a bit before making the salad.
To make your cous-cous, boil the stock (microwaves are great
for this) and pour over the cous-cous.
Add some salt and pepper, stir with a fork, and then let it sit for about
5 minutes or so until all the stock is absorbed and the cous-cous softened.
Next, cut your firm coat cheese into sugar-cube-sized pieces
and then make the dressing by whisking all the ingredients together in a bowl.
Ann's Note: the author's method of assembling is as
follows: cous-cous, followed by cheese
and roasted vegetables, salad leaves on top, then drizzle the dressing and then
sprinkle some onion seeds on top. My
method was to place the salad leaves at the bottom, then cous-cous, then vegetables
and cheese cubes and then dressing. Go
with whatever makes you happy!
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