Pearl Couscous with Beef Mélange

Opening the fridge to see leftover ingredients is a nice welcome... that means I don't have to cook from absolute scratch and I can clear them out for more space! There were a bunch of chopped vegetables from pizza night and ground beef from making the round of onigiri. A peek in my cupboard revealed pearl couscous which was a perfect base to make a one-pot dish. Pearl couscous is also called Israeli couscous which is a small whole grain-like food made from semolina or wheat flour and much larger than couscous. Overall, it is bland, but has a slight nutty flavour because it's toasted and has a slightly chewy texture, similar to barley. It cooks up like pasta and absorbs flavour well, so in soups, with sauces or in a sauté will work very well. This no-brainer combination of on-hand ingredients was a quick and effortless meal to put on the table on a weeknight.

Cook the pearl couscous according to package instructions, or until tender in salted boiling water. Drain.

In a skillet, I stir-fried the ground beef in chopped garlic until cooked and set it aside to sauté the vegetables (there were chopped red and green pepper, red onion, broccoli and frozen corn). Once crisp-tenderly cooked, return the beef and cooked couscous to the skillet and toss well with a few tsp. of beef liquid concentrate, salt and ground black pepper to taste and heat everything back up. And that's it folks!

Dinner is served in my beautiful new Italian terracotta !

I simply rounded the meal out with a Caesar salad and table fixin's such as hot sauce, chopped parsley, lemon, and sliced olives to jazz up the couscous! It was a hit with my kids!