One my way home from work last night, I was feeling a little more creative than usual. It has been a while since I’ve committed to cooking a decent dish – most dinners I make nowadays consist of canned fish, leftover rice or 2 minute noodles.

So as I made my way to the Coles grocery just around the corner from work, I came up with the brilliant idea of doing a stuffed Capsicum for dinner.

Initially the idea was to make a capsicum fried rice, quite similar to a pineapple stuffed fried rice.

Half way through browsing through the aisles at Coles, my eyes stumbled across a box of Couscous.

Couscous isn’t a very famous dish in Asia. Quite frankly until quite recently, I’ve never heard of it, let alone tried couscous. It’s not half bad!

“Couscous is a North African and Sicilian dish of semolina traditionally served with a meat or vegetable stew spooned over it.” -Wiki

So its a North African/Sicilian kind of dish. Thank you Wikipedia.

I love my meats. So instead of complimenting my already vegetarian dish with more vegetables, I needed to add some form of protein in my diet – so I got turkey meat mince to compliment the dish since it crushes up really well to be stuffed into a capsicum.

Obviously beef or chicken mince would do it to. Completely optional.

Both dishes I cooked in a pan – turkey was stir-friend and Couscous followed as per instructions on the box.

I’ve never made Couscous before! The instructions on the box were my only guidelines. And luckily for me, the instructions weren’t too complicated!

While all that was happening, I preheated the oven and roasted the capsicum for about 10 minutes or so.

When all was ready, I simply stuffed the capsicum with layers of couscous and turkey mince. I even added a vege mix on top for flavour and colour! *yay*

I was very happy with the results.

However, due to my lack of experience taking photographs (or perhaps ignorance may be a better word), I didn’t get a very good picture of the completed dish.

It’s quite a healthy dish, with tons of flavour. Only condiments I needed was to add a little salt and pepper onto the mince and vegetables, and it tasted *clears throat* quite splendid (in my rather bad british accent).

 

Cooking Instructions :

  1. Stir fry mince with garlic and onions. Compliment taste with salt or pepper.
  2. Cook couscous for 3-4 minutes on a large frying pan with boiling water.
  3. Slice top off capsicum and scoop out seeds and membrane.
  4. Roast capsicum in oven for 10 minutes, preheated to 180°C fan-forced.
  5. Remove capsicum from oven, and fill capsicum with layers of couscous and mince meat, alternating between the two.
  6. Fill top layer with vegetable mix.
  7. Cover capsicum and put into oven for another 10 minutes.
  8. Remove from oven, and let it sit for 2-3 minutes before serving.

 

I overcooked the initially intended amount, so just experiment and use your instincts on the measurements of each element.

Tada!

Now I accept hugs and/or pats on the back.

Actually better yet, let me know what you think in the comments section below!