Couscous

I just made this quasi-Moroccan dish:

1 cup beef stock (low sodium)
.5 cup water
1 cup quick cook couscous
.25 cup diced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
20 roasted almonds
4 dried apricots, julienned
6 sun dried tomatoes, julienned
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 bay leaf

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil in the bottom of a sauce pan with a tightly fitting lid. Add the liquid and all other ingredients but the couscous and bring to a boil. Stir in the couscous, cover, reduce heat and allow the couscous to steam until it's fluffy.

It was easy and very good, much better than the various packaged type dishes. I don't have any harissa but that would put it over the top.

Semolina comes from a very hard winter wheat from the Mediterranean region (now mostly grown in South Dakota or something) that is better known as the progenitor of good spaghetti. However, it makes all sorts of things, from a really delicious chewy bread to couscous, the staple of North African cooking. Couscous, for some reason, is much more protean than pasta. The huge surface area means it soaks up flavors and cooks very quickly (assuming you didn't buy the raw variety that requires multi-stage cooking). Here's two examples I make fairly often: