Friends, I am looking for a reasonably simple but tasty and filling couscous dish. I don't normally cook couscous, but I bought a box of it and I need ideas. I'm trying to feed a very hungry man in addition to my more humble self, so filling recipes are the goal. I usually cook without meat but lately I've started cooking some chicken once a week or so, so that's an option. Any suggestions?
Basic couscous treatment is (assuming instant couscous) equal volumes of couscous and boiling water, a knob of butter or glug of olive oil, salt and spices (optional). Tailor the spices to whatever you're serving with it. Once you've made your couscous, you can treat it sort of like cooked rice or pasta, any granular carbohydrate like that, serve it with a salad and some kind of protein - chicken, in your case, i guess, or some kind of bean dish maybe?
You can also mix things into it in a sort of grain salad analogue; diced onion and capsicum (bell pepper), maybe some peas or corn, whatever you like. Raisins or other small, dried fruit are appropriate to the cuisine, too, though I'm not a fan.
The most traditional method is to serve it with a stew kinda dealie; a tagine, typically. You can make a quite nice vegetable tagine with tomatoes and orange vegetables (pumpkin, squash, sweet potato) and cumin, cinnamon, coriander, etc. You could also make it with chicken; there are loads of different tagines out there.