Roast vegetables on couscous with Moroccan tomato sauce

Sometimes all you can manage when you stand in front of the kitchen is to assemble food, rather than really cook it or get too fancy. On the week that the magazine I edit goes to press (ie, the dreaded... deadline week!), that pretty much sums me up as a cook.

Mind you, the whole point of having good ingredients on hand, such as organic veg, high quality olive oil and a good supply of fresh herbs is that even the most simple of dishes is going to be pretty tasty. Or at least good for you...

Since this has been that very week, I present to you my latest assemblage!

Roast vegetables on couscous with Moroccan tomato sauce

There are four very simple components that go together to make this, and you'll end up with a hearty, filling, tasty and very likely nutritious dish that looks a lot fancier than it is. You've got roast vegetables, a bed of couscous, the tomato-based sauce, and some greens to add visual interest and in this case a really interesting flavour and mouth feel.

ingredients

Two kipfler potatoes

Two carrots

Four single clove garlic

One garlic clove

One whole beetroot (reserve the leaves)

Green beans

Ripe tomatoes

Coriander

Small red onion

Ground cumin

Ground coriander seeds

Cup of couscous

Half a cup of chicken stock

Salt & pepper

Olive oil

Tackle the longest step first - chop up your veg for roasting, peel the single clove garlic (don't bother chopping) and toss through some olive and season with salt and pepper. Get it going at normal roasting temp for your oven, and move on to the other ingredients.

For the tomato sauce you need to get a three tablespoons of olive oil heating in a pan, and then add finely chopped red onion. As it's starting to soften, add more salt and pepper, the ground cumin and coriander, and chopped fresh coriander. Finely chop up the tomatoes - about three medium size will do you - and add to the pan.

Add a touch more oil if the sauce is looking too dry, and cook the tomato down.

When that's done, transfer to a bowl and put aside. Next!

The couscous can take a little time, so get that going next. Simply add a cup to a sauce pan, and then pour over a cup of hot water out of the tap and the stock - so that's half a cup of water, half of stock. This needs to rest, and let the couscous soak up the liquid, so get cracking on the greenery!

You could use english spinach here, but since we've got the leaves from the beetroot - and they are edible - there's no sense in wasting them. Chop the crunchy stems up into inch long sections, add to the pan you've just removed the sauce from, along with a bit more oil and some sliced garlic. Roughly tear the leaves into two or three pieces, and after a minute or two add them to the stems. When the leaves start to wilt, the stems should be cooked but still crunchy, and garlic should just be browning. Take off the heat, and arrange around two plates.

Brush the green beans with some olive oil, and toss on top of the roasting veg.

The couscous is ready to heat now, so add either some rancid butter, olive oil or a dash of blue cheese. Rancid butter is traditional, but not something you can usually sell your friends on ("It's rancid-fresh!") - even traditional cooks tend toward the blue cheese option these days, and it delivers a similar complex flavour. Olive oil will do, and since you've used stock the couscous will be tasty regardless.

Warm the couscous over a low heat the stove, mixing whatever ingredient you've added thoroughly. Stir constantly, as you don't want it to stick and burn on in the ban. Taste test, then plate it up in a mound in the center of the plate.

Your veg should be done by now, so take it out of the oven and make a tasty stack on top of the couscous. Pour the tomato sauce over the veg, and the job's a good 'un.

And pretty tasty, too, though I really did wish I had some blue cheese on hand for the couscous - there are some very heavy, stolid flavours in this dish and the cheese would have given the meal some needed bite.

The big success, however, were the beetroot leaves, which have a lovely fulsome nutty flavour. It's not dissimilar to spinach, so I suspect the leaves would be even better with a dash of nutmeg. My friend Blu has an excellent warm beetroot leaf salad with crunchy croûton that I'm going to have to try some time.

Otherwise this a great meal after a long cold day - warming, filling, and pretty damn healthy to boot.

Roast beef on a bed of bok-choy, with kipflers, peas and tomato

I'm not really one for formal recipes most of the time. I like to look at what's in the fridge or in the pantry and work from there; plus, I like the challenge of making something that looks and tastes good from relatively first principles.

Of course, sometimes this doesn't quite work out - some things that sound great in your head don't quite work on the plate (or palette). Similarly, it can be really easy to overdo a dish or the amount of ingredients when you start thinking that you should start using a certain ingredient (like when it's been sitting there for a while and you want to use it before it collapses under its own entropic field).

My roast beef attempt last night was pretty much a success, but also - I think - one ingredient too far...

Roast beef on a bed of bok-choy, with kipflers, peas and tomato

Pretty much everything here is care of the food co-op, including the excellent slab of beef. In fact, this dish is pretty much inspired by a fellow Feedbagger (our delightful name for our co-op), who used a similar combination a few nights ago to very good effect. She went for a sweet sauce, though, while I was feeling like something a bit more savoury.

ingredients

Slab (it's a metric measurement) of grass fed sirloin

Three Kipfler potatoes

Goose fat

Dijon mustard

Two bunches of bok-choy

Peas

Cherry roma tomatoes

Coriander

Sea salt

Pre heat the oven to around 200 degrees celsius, or whatever's good for roasting - so many inner city ovens in rental houses are so wildly different in their heating that real measurement's a quaint whimsy rather than a hard rule. Unless you're clever and have an oven thermometer.

I'm not that clever.

While the oven's warming up, work on the slab and the 'taters. Arrange them on the baking tray, with the meat resting on a raised grill or similar, for even roasting. Use a basting brush to coat the meat and veg with a liberal coating of goose fat (ah, goose fat... I'll wax lyrical about you in a later post!), then brush on a good coat of dijon mustard to the upper surface of the beef. Sprinkle it all with some salt and pepper, and whack in the oven.

A piece of meat that size should take about a half hour to 45 minutes to cook to medium rare, and you'll also want to give it some time to rest once you remove it from the oven, so now's a good time to refill that glass of wine and check Facebook. Alternatively, it's a good chance to consider why you need to rest meat.

When you apply heat to steak or large fillets like this one, it contracts. It's a muscle, after all, and as the muscle squeezes itself, it squeezes all the tasty juices into the center of the cut. You can perfectly cook a steak, but if you serve it straight off the pan it'll be less than stellar. One cut will see all those juices flooding the plate, and the meat's colour will be quite uneven.

As a rule of thumb, you should rest meat cooked in a pan for as long as you cooked it. With a roast, like this, something like ten minutes will suffice for those juices to have suffused the entire cut. It'll be more tender, tastier, and look a lot better.

So, having pondered the importance of rest, you can now prep the rest of the meal.

Remove the bok-choy leaves from their stalk, wash, and place in a steamer (or a collander, if you're kind of half-arsed about having the right tools). Set a pot of salted water boiling, and then switch off your brain while you're shelling peas. Once you've got a good handful, set aside, and chop up some baby romas quite finely, and add some similarly chopped coriander.

You can plate the tomato right away, making a circle around the edge of the plate. Check the meat, and either guess it's done or be fancy and stick it with a thermometer: 60 degrees in the center means medium rare - the only way to eat good meat. Rest the meat in foil or in a warmed bowl, leave the potatoes in the turned off oven to stay warm, and get to steaming your bok-choy.

You want the bok-choy just wilting, when the leaves no longer look dry and unappetising. Create a mound of bok-choy in the center of the plate, then add the peas to the boiling water you've just used for steaming. Get the potatoes out, chop them into halves or thirds, and arrange around the bok-choy. Uncover the meat, slice thickly, and carefully place the slices on the bok-choy, before sprinkling some sea salt over the tomatoes and potato. Finally, spoon the peas over the meat, letting them fall where they may.

Serve to a salivating partner, and ponder your greatness.

Now, this was quite good if I do say so myself, but I regret including the potatoes. The kipflers are great, and tasted wonderful, but they really didn't add anything to the dish, and I think they actually made it a touch too much - and I'm not pleased with their aesthetic impact, either. I think this would have looked much more appetising without them, leaving the bold colours of the greens, the meat, and the tomato to speak for themselves.

That said, my partner devoured it no time, with a slight look of possibly wanting a bit more. So who am I to judge?

And the meat was perfect. Annoyingly, it was cut in such a way that a seam of connective tissue ran right down the center, but otherwise it was tender and juicy, and the mustard crust was a simply and very tasty addition that did away with the need for a sauce to add interest. The tomatoes with sea salt were fresh and tasty, and the steamed but still crunchy bok-choy complemented the meat superbly.

Done hard, played strong.