Sausage + Kale + Couscous = Simple Side Dish

Our Final Product: Israeli couscous with kale, edamame and sweet Italian sausage. With the hearty greens and sausage, it was a great side with our baked chicken and steamed carrots.

We had kale we wanted to use before it began to wilt too much. The couscous had been lingering in the pantry for too long and while we had plans of spaghetti sauce for some of the Italian sausage, we knew we wouldn\'t be using it all. We used 2 sausages here - sliced open and browned.

We set out to simply blanch the kale but let it rest in the water a bit longer so it would not be tough. We tasted for done-ness knowing we were planning on throwing it in a frying pan to finish the cooking. One thing to note: After we blanched the kale, we put it on a strainer, rinsed it with cold water to stop the cooking and then we picked up the mass in our hands and squeezed out the excess water. We did this a few times until most of the water was gone. This way it didn\'t water down our dish.

Two links of sweet Italian sausage sliced open and browned.

One finely chopped shallot went into a pan along with some olive oil and some couscous. We didn\'t measure. We decided to wing it. This is maybe a 1/2 - 3/4 cup of uncooked Israeli couscous. We waited until it turned a toasty golden brown color and then added water (about 1/2 cup at a time) and stirred, letting the couscous cook and become al dente. When it was nearly there (nearly al dente) we stopped adding water and began to add ingredients. You could, of course, use chicken stock instead of water.

We remembered that we had some frozen edamame and decided to toss in a handful.

In went our kale.

And then the sausage. We stirred together in the hot pan and then served. Final product in picture 1.