COUSCOUS AND CHICKPEAS IN RAS EL HANUT SPICE
I served this Couscous and Chickpea dish with the Moroccan Feast for my Son’s Birthday.
I used a recipe from the cookbook Honey & Co, Food From the Middle East. This is a lovely cookbook and I have used it a lot, as I love the flavours of food from this region.
I increased the amounts to feed 14, but I will give you the recipe as it is in the book. They say it is enough for 6 to 8 as part of a Mezze selection, or for 2 people for a meal.
I made it up to a certain point and had the rest of the ingredients ready to add later as I wanted to get as much done as possible before everyone arrived and it worked very well. I will put an ** where I stopped and left it for a couple of hours before finishing it off ready to serve.
It is incredibly easy to make and delicious.
- 1/2 Onion – finely diced
- 3 Cloves Garlic – thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
- 1 teaspoon Sea Salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon)
- 1 Tablespoon Ras El Hanut Spice mix
- 100g cooked Chickpeas – rinsed and drained (I used a large glass jar, so my dish had a higher proportion of Chickpeas, but I did this deliberately to increase the protein component as my daughter who does not eat red meat, was eating this as her main dish)
- 1 Tomato – diced
- 60g Couscous
- 180ml Boiling Water
- 1 bunch Coriander – chopped
In a frypan (that has a lid) on medium heat, fry the Onion and Garlic in the Olive Oil, for approximately 5 minutes. You want them to soften and get a tiny bit of color.
Add the Salt and Ras El Hanut and mix well to release the flavour.
Add the Chickpeas and diced Tomato and cook for a further minute.
** This is where i left it for a couple of hours, but I weighed out my Couscous and got my measuring jug ready for the water so it was ready to go to finish it off. Before the next step I simply heated it up again quickly.
Add the Couscous and the Boiling Water, mix with the Chickpeas, bring to the boil, then turn off the heat and put on the lid.
Leave for 10 minutes for the Couscous to absorb all the water.
Remove the lid and using a fork, fluff up the Couscous.
Place into your serving dish and top with the chopped Coriander.
