Meet my favorite Mediterranean Couscous salad, highlighting Israeli couscous and colorful mid-year produce. This Mediterranean-style salad is light, reviving, and flooding with colorful rounds of daintily cut crude zucchini and yellow squash. That’s right, crude squash! It’s so good.
This Mediterranean Couscous salad is a basic, light summer dish full of vegetables, entirety grains, chickpeas, and feta. I came up with this recipe six a long time back for Free People’s web journal, and it’s ended up one of my mom’s go-to potluck dishes. So, I thought I’d upgrade it to meet my current standards.
This salad is fair the kind of dinner I’m longing for amid this hot summer climate, and it would culminate for your Fourth of July parties. If you’re looking for more Freedom Day recipes, I’ve got you secured. I’ve recorded a few of my other favorite salads underneath, too!
Squash Preparation Tips
Here’s the thing. Crude squash is very top-notch, completely underutilized, and a pleasant elective to cucumber. The trap for this formula is to cut the squash into exceptionally lean rounds, so it offers a delicate, delicately fresh texture.
There are a few distinctive ways to finish this, beginning with the easiest:
- With a mandoline: Mandolines (affiliate connect) are sharp contraptions that offer assistance you making fast, uniform cuts. If it’s not too much trouble be cautious and don’t let your fingers get as well near to the blade.
- With a vegetable peeler: Once you have cut off the tip of the squash, you can snare the center of the peeler on the external edge of the squash and drag it over. This might take a few trials and blunders to begin with. It works particularly well on thin squash (more slender than the peeler is wide).
- With a sharp chef’s knife: Cut over the squash making your cuts as lean and indeed as possible.
Couscous & Pasta Options
I planned this recipe for pearled (Israeli) couscous, which is fundamentally a little circular pasta shape. I favor utilizing entire-grain couscous since the normal kind appears to spike my blood sugar levels.
Unfortunately, entire wheat pearled couscous has ended up harder to discover. You might get fortunate and discover it in your basic supply store or need to order it from Amazon like I did.
If you can’t discover pearled couscous, I would pick a diverse little pasta shape instead of standard (more fine) couscous. Little shells, fusilli, and farfalle will all work!
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
This Mediterranean Couscous salad with crude squash and strong Mediterranean flavors is a straightforward summer side dish. Pack up a bowlful for a weekday lunch or serve with a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc for supper. The recipe yields 6 side servings.
INGREDIENTS FOR Mediterranean Couscous
- 1 ⅓ cup whole wheat Israeli couscous (or any other little pasta shape, you’ll require about 3 cups cooked)
- ⅓ cup pine nuts
- ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice, to taste (from 1 to 2 lemons)
- 1 large shallot, finely chopped (about ½ cup)
- 2 cloves garlic, squeezed or minced
- ½ teaspoon fine ocean salt, to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas, washed and depleted, or 1 ½ cups cooked chickpeas
- 1-pint grape or cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 4 ounces feta cheese, disintegrated (½ cup)
- ⅓ cup pitted and daintily cut Kalamata olives
- 1 medium zucchini, cut into super lean rounds
- 1 small yellow squash, cut into super lean rounds
- ⅓ cup (⅔ ounce) chopped fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley
INSTRUCTIONS FOR Mediterranean Couscous
- Cook the Mediterranean Couscous until al dente, agreeing to bundle headings. Deplete any overabundance of water.
- Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts: In an expansive skillet over medium-low warm, warm the pine nuts until they’re turning softly brilliant on the sides and fragrant (be cautious not to let them burn). Exchange them in a bowl to cool.
- In a huge serving bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, shallot, garlic, salt, and a few turns of black pepper until combined.
- Add the couscous to the bowl and hurl to coat with the dressing. Best the couscous with the toasted pine nuts, chickpeas, tomatoes, feta, olives, zucchini, squash, and basil. Mix to combine.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste, and include an additional tablespoon or two of lemon juice if it needs more brightness. For the best flavor, refrigerate for 30 minutes sometime recently serving. This salad will keep well, secured, and refrigerated, for up to 4 days.