Cauliflower Cous Cous
Servings: 6 to 8 as side dish
Ingredients
- 1 whole cauliflower washed and broken into florets (a medium cauliflower should give you approximately 1 kilo of florets)
- 1 medium red onion very finely chopped
- ½ cup mint leaves finely chopped
- ½ cup Italian parsley finely chopped
- ½ cup coriander leaves finely chopped
- ½ cup dried currants or more if desired (consider also using sliced dried apricots)
- zest of 3 medium lemons if small use 4 lemons
- 4 tbls lemon juice maybe a touch more depending on your taste
- 3 tbls olive oil
- sea salt flakes and freshly milled pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat oven to 160 degrees fan forced and position rack into middle of oven
- Place 500g cauliflower florets in TM bowl and chop 5 seconds / reverse / speed 5, dispense cous cous into a large baking dish (ceramic baking dish doesn't need lining, but I would line a metal one) … if there are any big chunks put them back into the bowl
- Add rest of the cauliflower (500g) into TM bowl and chop 5 seconds / reverse / speed 5, add the cous cous to the baking dish … if there are any big chunks put them back into the TM bowl and chop 1 second / reverse / speed 5
- Bake for 20 minutes, stir mix around, and bake for another 10 minutes
- Allow to get cold in the baking dish before continuing
- Add the rest of the ingredients to the baking dish and stir through
- Taste and adjust seasoning to your preference
- Store in fridge until ready to serve
- Can be kept in the fridge for up to 3 days without spoiling
Notes
In general a whole cauliflower, when broken into cous cous, will give you approximately a kilo of weight (about 8 cups). That is for a medium sized cauliflower … so if you bought a BIG one then of course you will get more volume. So I have based this recipe on using 8 cups of raw cauliflower cous cous, so that when the dish is finished, there is enough to feed 6-8 people as a side dish.
Having said that however, I love this dish so if I am serving it to the family, then this would be part of our main meal to which I would add the protein directly into the cous cous, and then serve it with a salad … in that case it would give you 4 generous serves depending on how much protein you are adding.
This dish can be prepared the day before you need it, and holds well in the fridge for a good couple of days - great for lunches, filling wraps, or even a mid afternoon snack.
It is important to lightly bake the cauliflower cous cous so that it takes that “raw” edge of it … I do love raw cauliflower cous cous, but it is not for everyone, so by lightly baking it you will no longer have that distinctive “aroma” coming from the dish, and it is a much more pleasant way to eat it without feeling you have too much “crunch” in your dish.
You can definitely play with the flavours in here (add more herbs, try different dried fruit, add Moroccan spices, etc.) but the ones listed work really well as a base recipe.