Israeli Couscous Summer Pilaf

July 7, 2010 By Susan Voisin 55 Comments
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I’m thrilled to introduce my guest blogger today: the talented writer and artist–and just one of the nicest people I know–Nava Atlas. Nava’s cookbooks, from the classic Vegetariana to the more recent Vegan Express and Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews for All Seasons, are known for fresh, inventive recipes that are as easy as they are tasty. I’m happy to be taking the photos for her upcoming holiday cookbook, Vegan Holiday Kitchen, partly because I get a chance to sample so many of her recipes before they hit the press. Here’s a sneak preview of one of the recipes that my family particularly loved.

Hello, fellow Susan V. fans! I’m really pleased to be contributing a guest post to this blog, especially as it comes in the throes of a collaboration on my forthcoming book, The Vegan Holiday Kitchen, which will be published in October, 2011. Susan is providing fifty (yes, you read that right) photos for the book, and I’m sure that it won’t come as any surprise to her readers that the ones she submitted so far are absolutely stunning. Whenever I send the latest over to my editor, she says that her lunch looks so pathetic in comparison that she is tempted to toss it.

Writing a cookbook often means working on recipes that are out of sync with the seasons, which is not ideal. Fortunately, I’m developing some new summer recipes in real time. It makes me all the more cognizant of keeping cooking to a minimum, and to avoid baking altogether if possible. I think this makes Susan’s job more tolerable as well, since I’m not sending over recipes for her to shoot that require baking a pumpkin for hours or making a long-simmering stew when it’s a hundred degrees out.

For the chapter titled Independence Day and Beyond: Summer Entertaining, I’m working on a wide variety of grilled dishes, cold platters, and fruity desserts. Among these are a handful of unusual twists on pasta salad. No throwbacks to the boring, vinegary concoctions of the disco era or the “me decade” that followed, these take their inspiration from ethnic cuisines.

Israeli couscous is one fun little pasta. It’s round and quick-cooking, and has a very pleasant mouth feel (look for it in bulk at your health food store if you’ve never tried it). Combined with herbs, raw veggies, and lush stone fruit, it makes for a light and refreshing foil to grilled foods or well-seasoned plant-based protein dishes. It also makes for a lovely dish to share when you’re invited to a summer potluck.

This recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of olive oil, but feel free to cut back, in keeping with the low-fat theme of this blog. In fact, Susan mentioned that for photographing purposes, she likes to keep oil to a minimum. She used only one tablespoon in the dish before shooting it and thought it was fine without adding the rest.

I hope you enjoy this preview of The Vegan Holiday Kitchen. If you’d like updates on our progress, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter on my site, VegKitchen, which is currently undergoing a huge overhaul and expansion and being completely veganized. I also invite you to join me on my Facebook page.