Spiced apricot couscous salad

Couscous salad with smoked salmon fillet

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe, so here’s what I had for tea last night. This tastes best if you use fresh apricots, but if you plan on making it any time soon you’ll need to use dried ones or tinned ones (if you’re lucky enough to be able to find the type that are in juice instead of syrup!).

This amount serves around 2-4 people, depending on appetites and what you serve with it (probably 2 if you just have the salad by itself, 3 or maybe 4 if you have something substantial on the side).

It’s really more of a dish for summer, when fresh apricots are around, but it was still pretty tasty with the dried kind.

Spiced Apricot Couscous Salad

Ingredients:

180g couscous
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp each ground cinnamon, ground cumin and ground ginger
80g apricots
1 small red onion
15g fresh mint
Approx. 15g fresh ginger
Handful of cashew nuts
Juice of 2 limes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Cook the couscous in accordance with the packet instructions. Add the spices, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper then fluff slightly with a fork and set it to one side to cool. Either place the pan lid on or cover with cling film while cooling.

   

   Spiced couscous

2. While the couscous is cooling, chop the onion, mint, fresh ginger and apricots and juice the limes.

   

   Chopped ingredients

3. Add all the chopped ingredients plus a handful of cashew buts to the couscous. (I chopped the cashews in half, but you can leave them whole).

   

   Add the chopped ingredients to the couscous…

4. Stir everything in well, then add the lime juice and stir that in as well. Taste test the couscous and add extra salt/pepper/spices to taste.

Tada – done! So quick and easy. I served mine with smoked salmon fillet, but it also goes well with grilled salmon or other types of fish. Chicken would probably be good with it as well, although I’ve never done that. And obviously whatever vegetarian/vegan alternative suits you.

For variations, you could add sultanas as well as the apricots (this is really nice – I just didn’t have any last night), replace the cashews with pine nuts or even add in pine nuts as well as the cashews. It’s really quite a versatile dish 🙂

35 Before 35: Eating Marillenknödel in Austria

Number 14 on my 35 before 35 list was to go back to Austria and finally try Marillenknödel! That’s right… despite having lived in Austria for almost a year, I had never tried one of their most typical dishes (although to be fair I lived there from September til June, so not exactly during Marillenknödel season!). Obviously this situation couldn’t continue, so I added Marillenknödel eating to my 35 before 35 list and finally managed to make up for my failure pretty much exactly 8 years after I originally left Austria!

Marille is Austrian for apricot (Austrians speak German, but their own variety of German which has some different words. In normal German, apricot would be die Aprikose), and Knödel means dumpling… in this case a potato dumpling. To make this sweet dish, you remove the core of an apricot, replace it with a sugar lump then form a dumpling from potato dough (or sometimes a dough made with Topfen… the Austrian/Bavarian word for Quark) and place the apricot inside said dumpling. The whole thing is then steamed, rolled in browned breadcrumbs and served with a dusting of icing sugar.Very sweet and incredibly delicious!