Inspirations!

Lunch yesterday was inspired by two recipes I have seen and marked to try.
The first one was a vegetable couscous topped with zucchini ribbons that I once saw at my Cooking Light magazine! You can see the original recipe here.
I made couscous and used the ribbons idea, but nor I followed the recipe neither used the same ingredients. For my dish I used whole wheat couscous, chopped yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, and the pieces left from the zucchini when I could not manage to get more ribbons out of it (oh yes, no waste around my kitchen!). I sauteed the vegetables with olive oil, chopped onions and garlic, and added them to the couscous, which I simply mixed with boiling vegetable broth and let it sit covered for about 5 minutes before the broth was absorbed and I was able to fluff it up with a fork. To round the flavors up I added a tablespoon of butter and a few shakes grated Parmesan and incorporated it all.
This couscous was so delicious that it seemed we could not get enough of it. By the way, I think couscous is my new favorite, you can fix it up so many different ways, it tastes good, AND it takes about 5 minutes to make, you can't get much better than this!! I guess we will be turning into a couscous family around here!!! (Can't wait to try it in salad versions during summertime!)

The next dish I made was inspired by Fernanda's recipe for Halibut Supreme, that she posted here in Portugues, but that she actually got from this website, and it is in English version.
You will have to excuse my picture, as it was not as pretty as Fernanda's, but I have to say that the taste was delicious! We gobbled this up in no time and everyone enjoyed the flavor and yummy "meaty" texture of the Halibut.
For this one I omitted the bacon and used a layer of sliced onions on the bottom of the dish, which got very soft and created a delicious sauce underneath the fish, the Husband loved the sauce. And since I don't usually have sour cream in the house I used Greek yogurt in its place. I haven't tasted the sour cream version, but ours was good enough to be repeated this way!
Thanks Fernanda, for the yummy idea!










And finally, just to add a little more veggies into our plates and because I wanted to eat peas... I simply cooked some sweet green peas with mint for an extra flavor. I love the way mint compliments the pea flavor, it is so good! Next time I will chop up the leaves (I used them whole this time) so I can get more of a "minty" flavor to them. After cooking them in water I drained, added a tablespoon of butter and seasoned with salt. Simple but yummy!










It was a colorful and healthy meal we all enjoyed, pretty good, huh?!!
Ana!