This lemony pearl couscous with spinach, tomatoes, mozzarella, and olives (in our house, creatively dubbed, “The Couscous Dish”) is a delicious and quick vegetarian one-dish meal for the whole family . . .
Why Couscous with Spinach
This is from my repertoire of comfort dishes that evolved over the course of years.
I got to a recipe with couscous and spinach via my ultimate comfort food: pasta with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. If I could, I would eat that every single day. And I actually nearly did (on average, 5-6 nights a week) for about a year in law school. Then I went in for my annual physical. I was iron deficient, vitamin D deficient, and told that it is not good practice to eat the same thing nearly every day, so I should cut that out. (I was also eating the same breakfast, strawberries with toasted almonds, honey, and Greek yogurt, pretty much every day too.)
So I reluctantly added some variety to my diet. Specifically by incorporating foods with more iron.
Iron-Rich Foods
One of the best iron-rich foods is beef. (I think the best is actually liver, but that was not going to happen.) Have I mentioned how I don’t like to handle meat? I’ve slowly grown accustomed to it over the past 5 years or so (I have my ways of coping.) But handling raw meat was once a major sticking point for me. So the question was how to introduce more iron into my diet without having to eat a lot of beef. Or liver.
The unseemly answer? Dark. Leafy. Greens.
At the time, I didn’t feel too much better about eating lots of spinach than I did about cooking raw meat, but I thought I should give it a try. I thought I should be able to figure something out. Fresh spinach was out for me, because I just don’t like the way it feels in the mouth. It’s much better steamed. Plus, because it shrinks down when it’s steamed, I could eat a lot of it this way. Maybe a new pasta dish that could disguise the natural not-so-fantastic taste of steamed spinach?
Why Spinach with Couscous Works
The answer to making the steamed spinach more palatable turned out to be lemon! Lots of lemon makes the steamed spinach actually taste quite good. But once you add a lot of lemon, you need some other flavors to balance out the tanginess. The couscous (cooked in vegetable or chicken broth) adds a bit of a rich, starchy texture that works well with the lemon. And the fresh mozzarella adds a cool creaminess. You’ll see below that I like to try to keep the mozzarella at a slightly cooler temperature than the warm couscous and broth, which adds a really nice contrast. And the tomatoes and olives also work as great salty/umami counterpoints.
The key is to have enough other exciting flavor points in the dish that the steamed spinach kind of melds into the mix because it complements the other flavors.
So that is how this started. I came to really enjoy the spinach with couscous, to the point that I actually now specifically seek out more steamed spinach when I serve myself a plate!
I’m hoping that this will work on my kids as well.
Spinach with Couscous As a Weeknight Dish
This dish can be prepared in about 20 minutes. It was a frequent weeknight dinner when I was an associate at my law firm because it has it all – some protein, vegetables, and pasta! I usually eat it warm. It also works very well as a stand-alone vegetarian meal (just swap the chicken broth for vegetable broth). (In case you’re looking, here are some other vegetarian dinner options). If you have leftovers, it’s still good cold, or reheated the next day.
For pasta, I use either a pearl couscous or Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains (a mix of pearl couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa), which adds an interesting texture. You could alternatively use orzo. But the pasta needs to be small so that it mixes in well with all of the vegetables in this recipe.
The key to making this dish taste good (and for the mozzarella not to melt immediately into a sticky blob) is in how you assemble it. I’ll go through that in more detail in the recipe below. But basically you arrange your vegetables and fresh mozzarella in a specific way to ensure that some of the mix-ins get warmer and some stay cooler when you pour the hot pasta (and a little broth) over the top — this makes for good flavors and textures in the final dish.
Note on Tomatoes
I’ve used yellow cherry tomatoes in the pictures, but red ones work just as well. The yellow ones just have a slightly sweeter, milder flavor. See more info on picking good tomatoes / a tomato color guide in this post here.
Print
Pearl Couscous with Spinach, Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, Basil, and Olives
This lemony pearl couscous with spinach, tomatoes, mozzarella, and olives (in our house, creatively dubbed, “The Couscous Dish”) is a delicious and quick vegetarian one-dish meal that works for the whole family.
Our kids initially had some concerns about the couscous situation. We had to explain to their very suspicious little faces that couscous is just little balls of pasta. But after making this a couple of times, our kids love it and have started requesting it for dinner!
- Total Time: 20 min
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Ingredients
Couscous
3 1/2 cups vegetable broth (or, my personal preference, chicken broth)
1 pinch of saffron
1 cup pearl couscous (or Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains or similar, or Orzo)
Mix-Ins
2 cups yellow or red cherry tomatoes (about 1 1/2 cups once halved)
20 kalamata olives
1 lemon
3 ounces fresh mozzarella (about 10 Ciliegine or 3 Ovoline)
10 ounces of spinach
3 tbsp chopped basil
olive oil (optional, for drizzling)
Instructions
1. Start the couscous.
Heat 3 cups of broth (not all 3 1/2 cups) in a saucepan over high heat until boiling. Add the 1 pinch of saffron and the 1 cup of pearl cous cous (or similar pasta/grains mix). Reduce the heat to simmering and cook, uncovered, for the recommended time based on the pasta / grains mix instructions.
Note: The recipe on the pasta instructions probably recommends adding about 1 cup of broth or water and then covering the pasta while it cooks. This way, the pasta absorbs all of the broth. I like my way better for this dish. You’re left with about 1/2 cup of starchy broth at the end, which combines really well with the vegetables.
2. While the couscous cooks, prepare the vegetables.
Cut your 2 cups of cherry tomatoes in half (or quarter them if you prefer them to be a bit smaller) and put them in the bottom of the serving bowl, piled high to one side.
Note: For little kids who don’t like tomatoes, smaller pieces are probably better so that little bits of tomato will get mixed into the dish that are not obvious. This way the kids will get more of a taste of the tomatoes whether or not they’re willing to try the larger tomato pieces. Eventually, they’ll learn to like tomatoes!
Halve your 20 kalamata olives, lengthwise. Place them in the serving bowl on top of the tomatoes.
Squeeze 1 lemon over the tomatoes and olives. (I usually do this over a mesh strainer to catch any seeds that pop out of the lemon.)
Cut the 3 ounces fresh mozzarella into little pieces (about 1/2 inch wide wedges).
Place the chopped fresh mozzarella to the side of the serving bowl, on top of the tomatoes. See image below. The idea is that the mozzarella should be as high as possible off of the bottom of the bowl. This way, when you pour the pasta into the serving bowl, the fresh mozzarella will be above the hot pasta and will not melt. The tomatoes and the olives, however, will get nice and warm. When you mix everything together, the pasta will have cooled enough from the vegetables so that the mozzarella won’t melt.
3. Cook the spinach.
Once the pasta/grain mixture finishes cooking, there is probably about 1/2 cup of broth remaining in the pot (if there is a lot more, you can pour off the extra). Pour everything, pasta and broth, into the bowl over the tomatoes and olives, avoiding the fresh mozzarella. The broth and the pasta will heat up the vegetables while you steam the spinach.
Using the same saucepan, add the remaining 1/2 cup of broth and the spinach (as much as will fit comfortably – for me this is about 5 ounces in my usual saucepan). Heat over high heat until the spinach starts to wilt. Stir, and then add more spinach. Continue until all the spinach has wilted.
While the spinach wilts, wash and chop up the 3 tablespoons of basil.
Once the spinach has all wilted, pour off any remaining broth (I don’t recommend adding this broth to your dish). Then add the spinach to the serving bowl, to the side opposite of the mozzarella – again, we don’t want the mozzarella to get hot and melt. See the image below. Top the spinach with the basil.
4. Toss everything together & enjoy!
Top with olive oil if you’d like (I usually skip, because the broth provides a sauce, but my husband prefers his with some olive oil – he will drizzle olive oil onto his once it’s on his plate). Then toss everything together. I start mixing on the side of the bowl where the spinach is, to try to mix the spinach in first. I try to leave the cheese to mix in last.
- Cook Time: 20 min
- Category: Dinner
- Method: stovetop
