Light Bites for Lunch

Some friends came over for lunch yesterday with their new baby, Sofia, who is just shy of 1 month old. She mostly slept through the afternoon, only waking for dinner around 3 or 4. While she was asleep, we had our own meal.

I had roasted some zucchini, squash, eggplant, green beans, onion and a variety of bell peppers the day before, then tossed the beans and onion together. The other veggies were topped with balsamic vinegar and capers. We also had mozzarella balls with garlic and parsley, pickled veggies, cornishons, proscuitto and cheese, a baguette, and two "salads" that I prepared: gingery marinated garbanzos and a vegetable couscous salad. The garbanzos were made the day before and marinated in a mixture of red wine vinegar and oil with minced garlic, red onion and ginger and seasoned with salt and pepper.

The couscous salad was a recipe from The Naked Chef, and it used an interesting technique for the couscous. Make a lemon vinaigrette: 5 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. Mix in 9 ounces of plain couscous, then add 1 cup cold water and let it sit for 10 mintues. Meanwhile assemble the other ingredients: chopped bell peppers (the recipe called for roasted, but I used fresh since we were already having a platter of roasted veggies), 2 chopped tomatoes, half a small red onion, diced, half a diced jalapeno, seeds removed, torn-up basil leaves, the juice of a lemon, a couple tablespoons of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. You have to let this mixture sit for about 15 minutes, and then you add the couscous and mix it all together.

I also made a buttermilk panna cotta, which I'll write up separately.