Vegetable Tagine with olive and parsley couscous

Last week I was guilty of gluttony. A certain pizza establishment based in the Hyde Park shopping centre had this great special on(they still do if you're interested) – a small pizza for 29 bucs. The special – you could choose ANY pizza (yes even if it had expensive things like seafood on it) and you would only pay R29..anyway I took fulll advantage of this and ate 3 pizzas in a space of 5 days..they were good pizzas but certainly not good for my waistline..

So this week I have vowed to eat healthily hoping that my body would forgive me! Visited fruit and veg and stocked up on all the 'love-my-body- goodies I could get...

Dinner last night would make any vegetarian proud. Here's the recipe.

Vegetable Tagine with olive and parsley couscous

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 med red onion thinly sliced

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp dried chilli flakes            } I combined these two and used the chilli and garlic mix and just                                                      added 2 tsps.

1tsp ground coriander

1tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp tumeric powder

500g pumpkin  - I used roasted butternut

2 med potatoes chopped coarsely

2 ½ cups veg stock

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

½ cup coarsely chopped coriander

- Heat oil and cook onion (till soft) and garlic and chilli mix

- Add spices and seeds: cook, stirring until fragrant (such a great smell u'll know when its fragrant)

- Add the potatoe (As mentioned above I used roasted butternut which I didn't add to the tagine but instead placed alongside the meal). If you don't want to do that then at this stage add the butternut to the potatoe and spice mix.

- Stir in stock, bring to the boil. Reduce heat and let simmer uncovered until veggies are tender.

- Add can of chickpeas.

- Cook (simmer uncovered) for about 10 minutes (sauce will thicken slightly by now). The veggies should be 'tender' at this point,,,which means its READY!:)

Olive and Parsely Couscous

Cook couscous according to packet instructions, I made 2 cups of couscous

spoon of butter

1 1/3 cups black pitted olives

½ cup coarsely chopped flat leaf parsely

Couscous: Add olives and chopped flat leaf parsely to couscous and mix all together. I added another spoon of butter to this mix ;)

Side Note: If you want, you can cook the couscous with 1.5 cup of veg stock instead of plain old water.

It's ready to be served. As you can see in the pics I took, this time I chose to put the butternut alongside the tagine instead of mixed in with the tagine...both ways work just as well! I felt full and welllll nourished after this meal! :)

Hope you enjoy. Oh if you want to make it a day ahead, you can...just store the tagine and couscous separately in the fridge!