I love love love Mediterranean food. I love Cafe Mediterranean. I love hummus and pita bread, salmon and tomatoes, fresh vegetables and olive oil.

I recently bought couscous, and I had to give it a try. It worked pretty well with sausages and pork chops, but the best pairing was with spinach and baked salmon.

Ingredients

• Salmon steak or fillet
• Couscous: I used San Remo couscous, which takes only 5 minutes! Just add boiling water and butter or olive oil.
• Spinach: I had frozen spinach, but fresh would probably work better.
• Onions
• Tomatoes
• Chili flakes
• Olive oil
• Lemon
• Garlic
• Peanuts (optional)

Procedure

1. Pre-heat oven.
2. In a baking dish, squeeze juice of one lemon. Mix with olive oil, chili flakes and black pepper. Arrange salmon skin-side up.
3. Put salmon in the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes, then turn so the skin side is down.
4. In another baking dish or pan, arrange tomato and onion slices with garlic and olive oil. Oven roast until well-done.
5. In a shallow pan, boil water. When water is boiling, add spinach. Let it simmer until spinach is wilted. Remove from water.
6. Cook couscous according to instructions. For the San Remo couscous, add 2/2 cup boiling water to half a cup of couscous. Cover for 5 minutes. After that, fluff with a fork, and mix with butter or olive oil.
7. Mix spinach with couscous.
8. Pour couscous into a serving dish and carefully place baked salmon on top.
9. Pour tomatoes, onion and garlic on top of salmon. Sprinkle with peanuts.

I have to say, this was amazing. As we were eating, we also had a dipping sauce of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which was really great with the salmon.

I can think of so many ways to level up this dish. We could add fresh basil, or chickpeas mixed with the couscous. We could use fresh spinach, no need to blanch. Instead of spinach, we could arrange the couscous on top of a bed of lettuce. We could add baked eggplant. Cherry tomatoes instead of regular tomatoes would be amazing, and a sprinkling of parmesan.

Just add white wine, and enjoy!