Couscous Salad with Mint and Shoarma

Today was a lovely day. And sadly this was most likely the last nice day of this summer. Autumn is coming, it's a shame really. There are so many things I still want to do, most of them involve playing in the garden with fresh herbs and learning how to grow them.

This growing season has been short for us. We moved into this house in May. Before that we didn't have a garden and thus didn't really grow any herbs at home other then the basil, chives and parsley that lived on the kitchen window ledge.
After we settled into this house and finished everything inside, we started work in the garden. At first I hated it. Getting soil under my fingernails, dirty hands... really I had brown, rather then green fingers. That changed when my boyfriend suggested that we could dedicate part of the garden to be a herb garden. I loved the idea, cooking with lots of different fresh herbs out of our own garden. What could be better then that! Since then, my knowledge about plants, gardening and herbs has grown a lot and I wish that there was more summertime left. It feels that I now need to wait forever until I can grow new things again. Of course growing season is not over, and I can still enjoy all the fresh herbs we have in the garden, but I want more.

This salad gives me that summery feeling you need at the end of the season. It has a great orangy and minty flavor, with tasty little chunks of shoarma meat. Last week I did a post on how you can make your own shoarma spices in case you can't buy shoarma meat in the supermarket. I hope you like it as much as we did this summer!

This post will be my first entry to Weekend Herb Blogging. This week it is hosted by Chriesy of Almond Corner.

Couscous Salad with Mint and Shoarma (serves 4)
Ingredients
150 gram Couscous
250 gram Shoarma
1 Cucumber (optional)
3-5 Tomatoes
4 Sundried Tomatoes (on oil)
2 Oranges
2 Lemons
2 tablespoons Pine nuts
6 sprigs of Mint
20 gram of fresh Parsley

Method
1. Put the couscous in a bowl. Add the zest of the lemons and oranges to the couscous, squeeze the juice out of the oranges and lemons and add too. Put aside.
2. In the mean time roast the pine nuts and let them cool down on a plate. Fry the shoarma meat, and let this cool down also.
3. Clean the tomatoes and cucumber and chop into small pieces. Chop the mint and parsley, keeping a few good leaves aside and add this, together with the meat, to the couscous. Stir and let it stand for half an hour so the couscous can take in all the fluid. Season to taste.
4. Cut the sun dried tomatoes into small strips, add this with the pine nuts and separate leaves to the salad and serve. Enjoy!