PETE'S PRAWNY COUSCOUS
November 15, 2007
It’s important to admit that we do eat fast food. Well, food that is fast and easy to cook and eat. Let’s face it,
involved cooking experiences are not always appealing at the end of a long day. Like all creative enterprise, sometimes you just haven’t the energy
to do more than hold a plate.
For these days one of the quick and easys I haul out is something I developed with my good friend the writer Pete Irvine,
author of Scotland the Best . At one time of our lives we were house mates; gay bachelors. An Edinburgh odd couple down in the east village.
Though who was Lemmon and who was Matthau is debatable. Anyway as we both had intensely busy flitting lives,
we created a repertoire of quick dishes we could scoff on a Thursday night with a bottle of Rioja as the Question Time
titles rolled.
Our favourite is ‘prawny couscous’. And it simply requires any or all of courgette, pepper, aubergine,
spring onion (you get the picture) diced into small squares with garlic and chilli, well seasoned and herbed
(whatever is around but sage and thyme are good) and flung in the oven to roast. You’ll know when it’s done –
a bit burned is important for the flavour but whip it out just before completely toasted. I keep plenty of
prawns frozen as simple and easily dressed protein for salad, pasta and this. Defrost some and squeeze the water out.
Unglamorous fare but they don’t seem to be in danger. Yet.
Couscous needs to be just right but is so easy to get wrong. Add the same quantity of boiling water to grains. I do mine in a measuring jug. Add a bit of olive oil, fork it
round and leave covered with a cloth for 5 minutes. Throw into a bowl with the vegetables, prawns and chop in a bunch
of coriander. Squeeze over the juice of a lime and settle on the sofa. I took a big bowl of this to my last book club.
It softened the vitriol of even a gang of literary minded gays fighting off 50. And if there is any leftover and like
me you like to take leftovers into the wider world, it makes an enviable filler for the lunch box. Tell Pete if you see him.
He’ll be pleased that prawny couscous made it to cyberspace.
TENDER WORDS
Tender (2009) tells the story of Nigel Slater's love affair with his garden in
Islington and the many seedlings he has raised in his box-hedged vegetable patches. It’s a magnificent volume, like a medieval knightly
treatise with pictures of his Eden, its produce and many of the recipes he has created from them.
23 May, 2010
FOOD FROM THE HEART
Cooking is a basic human instinct. We’ve been eating, chopping, shaping, flavouring, enticing ingredients into something delicious
since time began. But as the way many of us live has changed, the basic skills we require to cook, are no longer valued and it’s often easier to
let others take control of what we eat.
21 April, 2010
IN A RIGHT FISH STEW
This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and
doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming
from your pot.
15 March, 2010