Vegetarian Couscous Salad

Ok, Today I'm going to teach you how to make a vegetarian couscous salad with your own freshly made pesto sauce. Since it's all about luxury, we're making it with great fresh veggies and expensive olives (at least in Sweden )

This is what you'll need

• Mozzarella Cheese
• Fresh Basil
• 2 Avocados,
• Any kind of Lettuce you prefer
• 2 Tomatoes
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Olive oil
• Kalamata Olives
• A chunk of Parmesan Cheese (not in picture!)
• 1 bell pepper
• Couscous
• Salt
• Black Pepper
• A clove of Garlic.
• A half red Onion

Now, begin with the lettuce and basil, put them in a bowl and rinse under water.

Shake it baby!

Or not.

Cut the lettuce into smaller parts and put it away in a bowl. Take your tomatoes and cut them into smaller pieces, throw into the bowl.

Making couscous is easy, just remember, one part couscous and two parts water. In this case we used about 1 decilitre couscous and 1,9 decilitres of water. Bring the water to a boil, add some olive oil and salt, put the couscous into the boiling water and turn of the plate.

Before you gently stir the couscous into the water, it should look something like this.

Put a lid on your casserole and wait for about five minutes, your couscous should now be ready to put in the salad.

Take that red onion and slice cut or dice into a preferred size. I like mine medium sized and in pretty triangular shapes.

Cut avocados in halves, take out the stone, and gently peel them, this could get a bit messy.

Cut the avocado into smaller pieces, look really focused while doing this.

Get the bell pepper and chop it like there's no tomorrow!

Put your neatly chopped bell pepper into the bowl.

Chop one clove of garlic and toss it in with the rest of the salad. If you made everything correct, the salad should look like this.

Get that mozzarella, chop it up and put it in the bowl, which by now should look something like this.

Now for the olives, Kalamata olives have stones in them so you have to cut around the olive,

and then firmly squeeze out the stone. If you're lazy you could just throw the olives in as they are. Either way, throw the olives in with the rest of the salad.

Remember that basil? This is the fun part of the salad goodness! Take the basil and put it in a blender-suitable container like a measuring cup (or if you have it, a stationary blender) Blend the basil along with shredded Parmesan cheese. Add olive oil, salt and black pepper. Mix it good.

The pesto is ready when it looks something like this.

You'll need about a small bush or so of fresh basil and a chunk of Parmesan to make pesto for two. If you find this way to hard or boring, you can always buy pesto in the supermarket.

When using a handheld blender, beware of pesto trying to escape onto your clothes or walls.

Mix the salad.

Add more olive oil, salt and black pepper.

Sprinkle it with balsamic vinegar.

Add your delicious pesto sauce to the salad. Enjoy!