This is a quick and easy summer salad that I've been making for years. It's tasty, healthy and dead easy to make. I find it's particularly suited to those long, hot summer evenings when you don't want to be making anything too complicated. Quantities are pretty approximate, so I wouldn't bother measuring stuff.
British cooks be careful with the commonly-available sweet chilli sauce. It's way too spicy, so use less or get hold of the much milder Thai stuff available in oriental supermarkets.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
- 2 lamb fillet slices
- 1/2 cup sweet chilli sauce
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- Fresh ground pepper
- 1.5 cups couscous
- 1.5 cups boiling water
- Juice of six lemons, or limes to the same volume
- Salad vegetables, julienned for the carrots, cucumber, pepper (capsicum) types
Method:
Cut the lamb into 1.5cm-wide strips and mix through with the ground cumin, half the sweet chilli sauce, a liberal grinding of pepper and half the lemon juice. Leave to marinate an hour or more, covered in the fridge.
Mix the remaining sweet chilli and lemon juice into a sauce. This is easiest done in a sealed jar, but can be done with a teaspoon in a little jug if you want to be classy.
Heat a frying pan to very hot with a little oil. Fry the lamb strips until a nice golden charring is on each side. The sweet chilli will caramalize. Discard the remainder of the marinade.
Prepare couscous by placing an equal volume of couscous and boiling water in a bowl and covering. Leave for a few minutes, then fluff with a fork.
Serve in bowls. First the couscous, then the salad vegetables, finally the lamb strips. Allow diners to add the sauce to taste.