Sometimes I just don’t take out meat in enough time for it to defrost by dinner. I thought about it early enough. But I am at that state of meat-in-the-freezer where it is the stuff I don’t know how to cook. My mental inventory check led me to hamburger, but I didn’t want to cook that, so then my brain flitted off to something else. Then later, I think I might have opened the freezer and, uninspired, shut it. Then, by the time I got serious it was too late. I was HOPING it was not too late, but alas when it came time to cook dinner, the meat was not defrosted. And on top of that we didn’t really have all that many veggies in the fridge. Sigh. We have lettuce and salad fixings, but nothing to cook except fennel. We had leftover couscous from the other night. So I was thinking I could roast the fennel AND some garbanzo beans and then mix it with the couscous. Ahhh . . . sometimes I love when there is “nothing” in the house to eat. I loved it.
I always say I don’t like beans, because I don’t for the most part. I don’t like BEAN beans. I like green beans, but I don’t think of them as beans because they are long. Or more so because green beans are eaten fresh like a vegetable and not dried like a “bean bean”. I do like garbanzo beans though. And I like red kidney beans but only in Red Beans and Rice and in THIS bean salad.
I like garbanzo beans or chickpeas as they are also known, because they taste buttery. They add a butter flavor to dishes — to me. And I really like them roasted. So I decided to roast them with the fennel.
I actually roasted them both on the same pan. I put parchment paper on a large jelly roll pan. I cut up the fennel and — well, if I am posting a recipe I put is in that form.
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Couscous, Fennel, and Garbanzo Beans
–2 cups prepared Couscous
–olive oil
–1 bulb Fennel
–1 can Garbanzo beans
–handful of grape tomatoes
–garlic salt
–pepper (if you like)
–1 1/2 tablespoon butter
Drain the beans and rinse them. Set them aside to dry. Cook the couscous according to the package (I used left over couscous). Preheat the oven to 450° F. Cut up the fennel and put it on a parchment paper lined oven pan. Drizzle olive oil on it and sprinkle garlic salt on it. Toss it. Then put it in the oven for five minutes. After five minutes take the pan out and put the beans on the pan. (I kept the fennel and the beans separate on the same pan because I was not sure they would cook to my liking at the same time. This gave me the option of taking one off the pan.) Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic salt. Bake for 15 minutes. Take them out of the oven and toss both the fennel and the beans (keeping them separate). Adding more salt if you would like. Bake for 15 minutes.
Cut the tomatoes in half.
Add the butter to the couscous and mix it withe the roasted veggies. Add the cut up tomatoes before serving.
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Of course, since I was just throwing veggies in leftover couscous I didn’t think to photograph any of it until the end and it came out so lovely – at least I think so. Probably the bright red tomatoes. They make dishes look pretty. And it tasted fairly good. I really like fennel.
As a note, since I used leftover couscous, I heated it in a pan with a little butter, then I added the roasted veggies. The recipe is written using just made couscous.
If you like roasted tomatoes you could roast them, too. I prefer tomatoes raw so I put them in just before serving.
Couscous is great. It is like pasta you can add anything you want to it. It can be a side dish or a main dish.
Do you like couscous?
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