Sunday, May 28, 2006

Roasted Couscous and Cranberry Salad


For a holiday cookout this past weekend, I decided to whip up a couscous salad of my own invention. Roasty stuff sounded good and fitting, so this was the end result:

INGREDIENTS:
1 box of plain couscous
1 bunch of asparagus
1 roasted red pepper
1-1.5 cups of toasted walnuts
A couple fistfuls of dried cranberries
Some homemade Roasted Red Pepper Dressing

Make the salad dressing the night before so that the flavors have a time to do their little copulative thang overnight. Whip up a batch of couscous according to the directions on the box or the bag. In the meantime, roast the asparagus for a few minutes in your broiler, with a little bit of olive oil. You can probably get away with roasting the red pepper at the same time, you'll probably just need to remove the asparagus before the red pepper. Post-roasting, dice up the red pepper into small pieces and cut up the asparagus into small chunks as well. Toss both over the couscous and mix. Crumble up your walnuts a little bit and then toast them. Toss those babies into the mix along with your dried cranberries and mix. Add the roasted red pepper dressing to taste and refrigerate for a couple hours to again let the flavors tango. Serve at room temperature.

A very nice mix of rich roasty flavor coupled with a sweetness from the cranberries will make your insides wanna make sweet sweet love to you. If insides could do that.

Makes enough to take to a picnic--about 4-10 servings, depending on how big of pigs folks are.

*Tip: Always roast your nuts. *Stifled giggle* It makes them a lot bigger *snicker* in flavor and brings out an even nicer, richer fullness on your tastebuds. Read some directions on how to toast 'em.

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