Most times, hunger coincidentally appears exactly when we come out of the water. Fast cooking therefore is a must. As we don’t wanna eat pasta and rice all time, we got creative and found some other ways to treat ourselves with energy.

Van recipe for the road

When it comes to quick and easy ideas for a van life, couscous recipes can not be beaten. Couscous needs 5 minutes to soak boiling water, and you’re away. Now be creative and vary as you want and can. We try to use local veggies as they are more tasty as imported ones. Even better when you get homegrown fruits or greens for free from friendly locals, these are the best! If you see farmers don’t hesitate to ask if you can buy directly from them some, it’s cheaper as in the groceries and you can pick the ones you like by yourself. As our space in the fridge is limited we just buy variable items and use them in different dishes. So the type of cheese we took in the video was a Manchego (we were in Spain at that time and this cheese is a salty one who matches to multiple recipes). If you have some spare couscous after cooking, perfect! The next day you can fry it in the pan or prepare some salad with it.

“After -surf couscous” for 2 persons

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of couscous
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 cucumber
• thin slice of cheese of your choice (in the video we took goat cheese)
• a handful of dates
• 1-2 tomatoes (depending on their size)
• 3 branches of spearmint
• one avocado
• olive oil
• butter
• salt
• pepper

Method:

1. Pour a cup of boiling salted water over a cup of couscous and wait 5 minutes until the couscous soaked all the water.
2. Meanwhile cut the cumber, the dates, the cheese and the tomatoes into little cubes.
3. Slice the avocado.
4. Chop finely the spearmint.
5. Roast the avocado in a pan in hot butter.
6. By now the couscous should be ready to be mixed with the raw veggies and date cuts.
7. Add a spoon of olive oil, salt and pepper.
8. Top the couscous with the fried avocado slices.
9. Enjoy it best when it’s lukewarm.

Variations:

Instead of Manchego we highly recommend to try this couscous with fresh roller goat cheese. The dates can also be replaced with fresh figs (we got some fresh ones from a friendly Spanish local once, who had to many of them from his garden, and cooked the couscous with them, just brilliant). If you don’t like sweet ‘n salt mixes you can prepare this recipe with dry tomatoes and olives (instead of fresh tomatoes and dates). Spearmint is typical in the Moroccan kitchen, it gives a fresh taste to your dish, but not everybody likes it. Take the herb you like the most to round up your personal couscous.