It’s another confetti recipe for French Fridays with Dorie. This week it’s a Couscous Salad.

I didn’t really think much about it. I just gathered my ingredients, switched around a few things because of what I had on hand, and blindly made the salad. When I looked at the finished bowl, I was wowed! The bowl was colorful, the flavors were varied, and I couldn’t stop eating it.

This couscous salad has a Moroccan flair. First, the couscous is cooked with warm-flavored spices (ginger, cumin, cinnamon), garlic, and turmeric for color. I made half the amount of couscous (also halving the liquid and spices), but didn’t adjust the other ingredients, so there was a little less grain per bite, but this still made a gigantic bowl.

Dorie said she usually adds what she has on hand, so I took that as license to tweak the salad to work for me. Anyone who has followed my blog for a while will know that raisins weren’t going to fly at my house… I used my favorite savory substitute for raisins, oil-cured olives (from Morocco, no less). For the lemon zest, I minced some of the preserved lemon I had leftover from our last confetti dish, tuna confit. And, finally,I used a purple (not red) pepper and, because peas are no longer in season here, I blanched some green and wax beans, and sliced them thinly.

This could easily be the vegetarian star of a summer meal. I really loved it!

If you’d like to try this yourself, you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table. It’s also on-line at Epicurious  To see whether the other Doristas liked this as much as I did, check out their links here.