Green green green! That’s all I could think and see when I was making my dinner. I was craving my first green asparagus meal of the season and as I was shopping for more ingredients, I somehow ended up with nothing but green ingredients, so I added some mushrooms to have some extra flavour and colour at the same time. As you can see there’s no meat or fish in this recipe, making it a very lean and healthy meal as we are not combining loads of carbs with high amounts of protein but are focusing on veggies.
There are a few ingredients to me that live and breath spring and green asparagus is one of them. You can buy them all year round, but keep in mind that in Ireland the season runs from April until July, so if you buy them outside of the season you should be aware that there’s no way it comes from Ireland/UK or Europe in general.
What I love about asparagus is that you can use it in so many recipes & cook it in lots of different ways (you can even eat it raw!) and even more important than that: it’s healthy! Asparagus are both anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory and provides Vitamin C, B1, B2, B6 and E as well as GSH. These nutritients can help you reduce type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease and can help reduce the risk of certain types of cancer.
Other than that asparagus also help your digestive system and helps with better nutrient absorption, lower risk of allergy, and lower risk of colon cancer. It’s also rich in fiber and contains some good protein that helps your digestive system even more.
Serves: 2-3 people
Ingredients
- 150g Irish button mushrooms
- 300g couscous
- 4 spring onions
- 300g sugar snaps
- 500g thin green asparagus
- Optional: fresh parsley
Preparation
Peel your mushrooms and slice them up. Remove the little moustache from the spring onions as well as the last centimeters of the dark leaves and slice everything else up in thin slices. Keep a few of the darker green slices on the side as we’ll be using them when we plate our meal.
Both the sugar snaps and the asparagus don’t require much work. Simply cut the tip away from both sides of the sugar snaps and slice them in half. For the asparagus you only need to remove a small piece of the bottom and slice the remaining parts up in thick slices. Do not slice up the tips though, stop as soon as you reach them. Put a few tips on the side as well, we’ll use them as a finishing touch along withe some of the spring onion.
For the couscous simply follow the instructions on the package.
Heat up some good quality olive oil in a pan and add the spring onions first. Cook them for 3 minutes and then add mushrooms, continue to cook until they have browned and then add sugar snaps and asparagus as they only need to cook for a little while. Continue to cook it all for 3-5 minutes and your meal is done. I personally would not add any salt or pepper or any other spices for that matter but simply keep this as fresh as possible. You can, however, add some fresh parsley on top.
10 Comments
Candy Kage
May 17, 2016 at 12:48 pmCouscous is such a nice change from rice and adding pods, onion and greens would make it a wonderful side dish.
Tine
May 18, 2016 at 2:58 pmI must say that I’ve always been so fond of couscous, it takes no time to make and you can add so much stuff to it, and it’s lower in carbs than pasta (non-wholeweat one of course). One of my favourites is couscous with lamb meatballs!
Lindsay Katherine
May 17, 2016 at 1:25 pmAside from mushroom, you named all of my favorite things!! I cannot wait to try this recipe – it looks so yummy.
Tine
May 18, 2016 at 2:57 pmI’m actually the same haha, never used to like mushrooms but they started to grow on me (not literally obviously) but I’m sure the recipe will still work without them or you could look for an alternative extra ingredient, perhaps aubergine if you like that?
Katie Arnold
May 17, 2016 at 2:22 pmWow that looks so good!! I love veggie filled dinners so this is right my alley!
The Oracle
May 17, 2016 at 2:26 pmoh wow! This looks absolutely fantastic. I will have to try this
Emily Bendler
May 17, 2016 at 2:29 pmThis looks so delicious and healthy!! I love it!!
Marette Flora @ Floradise
May 17, 2016 at 3:55 pmThis looks delicious and I like that it’s vegetarian. i am pinning this!
Floradise: http://www.maretteflora.com
Greta Hollar
May 17, 2016 at 5:01 pmThis is so yummy! I love that it’s vegetarian.
Greta | http://www.gretahollar.com
Tine
May 18, 2016 at 2:55 pmThank you! I’m not a vegetarian myself but I try to eat as balanced as much as I can so I very often end up eating only veggies with pasta/couscous/potatoes.