Meatless Monday #1 – Moroccan Baked Vegetable Couscous

I grew up in Nebraska where, as you can imagine, we ate a lot of red meat and potatoes, and trust, I’m not complaining.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to like all different kinds of meat.  For years I had heard about Meatless Mondays, but I never incorporated it into our meals.  I also [incorrectly] assumed the food would be boring or bland.  The Payaso also grew up eating red meat, and, I think, he could eat a steak for every meal.  Lately, I’ve become curious about Meatless Mondays so I did a little research.  Meatless Monday even has their own website, which has recipes and tons of information about the history and benefits of going veggie-tarian one day a week.   According to the website, “Meatless Monday is not a new idea. During World War I, the U.S. Food Administration urged families to reduce consumption of key staples to aid the war effort. “Food Will Win the War,” the government proclaimed, and “Meatless Monday” and “Wheatless Wednesday” were introduced to encourage Americans to do their part. The effect was overwhelming; more than 13 million families signed a pledge to observe the national meatless and wheatless conservation days.  The campaign returned during World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt relaunched it to help that war’s efforts on the home front. In the immediate post-war years, President Harry S. Truman continued the campaign to help feed war-ravaged Europe. Meatless Monday was revived in 2003 by former ad man turned health advocate Sid Lerner, in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future. Reintroduced as a public health awareness campaign, Meatless Monday addresses the prevalence of preventable illnesses associated with excessive meat consumption. With the average American eating as much as 75 more pounds of meat each year than in generations past, our message of ‘one day a week, cut out meat’ is a way for individuals to do something good for themselves and for the planet.”

Gringo: “Amor, I think I’m going to incorporate “Meatless Mondays” into my blog.”

Payaso: “Que?  No meat on Mondays?”

Gringo: “Yep, I’m pretty sure that’s what that means, silly.”

Payaso:  “So vegetarian?”

Gringo:  “Yes, amor.”

Payaso: “But only on Mondays, right?!”

Going meatless on Mondays will be a huge change for us, but I’m excited about the challenge it brings.  How do I deliver delicious recipes to you on a weekly basis without meat?  I’m committed to blogging about one meatless Monday dish every week.  I’m not so sure I can tackle “Wheatless Wednesdays” just yet.  So I started thinking about what kind of vegetarian dish I wanted to try on the Payaso first.  I knew it needed to be visually stunning and it needed to have loads of flavor.  Then I remembered a recipe I made years ago using couscous and zucchini and into my archives I went.  By archives I mean a box full of recipes that include at least 2500 sheets of paper that are in no particular order; let’s just say it took me a while to find.

Okay, here’s the deal.  I didn’t make the recipe the way it’s written above.  I totally cheated, y’all.  I didn’t have any couscous, but I did have two boxes of a parmesan cheese and garlic couscous mix, which included a flavored packet.  I will say, the extra boost of flavor from this boxed mix was delicious.   Let me also say, and you’ve heard me say it before, feel free to adjust the spices or ingredients in this recipe.  Okay, another confession: the recipe calls for minced garlic.  I rarely, I mean hardly ever, buy heads of garlic.  For me, it’s hard to peel, I don’t like that my hands smell like garlic for a few days (despite trying every Google-able suggestion to remove the smell of garlic from your fingers and hands).  Costco sells a large jar of minced garlic and that’s what I use in all of my recipes.  And by use, I mean I don’t skimp.  Just look at how much garlic I added to this dish.  Halleloo the Payaso isn’t a vampire…

I also want you to use at least the spice measurements in the recipe.  When you add the spices to the onions, it will look like too much, but it isn’t.  Even when you add the zucchini, you’ll think, “That’s way too many spices, Gringo!” but it’s not.  Please trust me here.  Remember you’ll be adding tomatoes, garbanzo beans and couscous to this dish.  We want to make sure everything gets coated with those spice warriors; we want bold not bland flavors.  My only word of caution is to leave the zucchini cooked, but still crisp.  It’ll continue cooking in the oven and you want the texture or slight crunch from the zucchini.

Red pepper flakes.  The truth is I don’t use them that much in my cooking because the Payaso usually uses hot sauce like Americans use ketchup.  I will say that I wish I had used just a little more red pepper flake when I made this dish.  I had some leftover pepper jack cheese and that’s what I added to the middle layer.  The slight kick from the pepper flakes and the pepper jack cheese was a happy compliment  to the raisins in the dish.  You get all those glorious spices, a sweet burst from the raisins, and then your mouth is left with a nice warm note from the pepper flakes and pepper jack cheese.  Do you need to buy pepper jack cheese for this dish?  Y’all know that’s rhetorical, right?  I used pepper jack because it’s what I had in my fridge that needed to be used.  I’d likely use it again because I absolutely loved the flavor it gave to the dish.  Feel free to use another kind of white cheese in its place (more monterey jack or mozzarella would be nice with these flavors).

After baking the dish for 30 minutes, here’s what it looked like.  They say we eat with our eyes, and my eyes were convinced this would be a good Meatless Monday meal for the Payaso.  The purpose of baking is to melt the cheese and warm the ingredients together.  I absolutely loved the brown crusty bits of cheese on the top of this dish.  The Payaso’s first Meatless Monday mean was a success and he’s looking forward to what the Gringo cooks next week.