Grilled Vegetables in Balsamic Tomato Sauce with Couscous

This is a 5 star recipe if done with a 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes with garlic, basil and oregano. That makes a huge difference in my opinion. Based on other reviewers, I did the tomatoes and balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan and let simmer on low until the vegetables were done! I cut up the veggies for the outside grill. Of course I had to use what I had on hand which was everything from the recipe except beans and eggplant. I substituted mushrooms and asparagus. Honestly you can use whatever you have on had.....but you definitely need the onion and peppers! They become so sweet when grilled on a medium setting. I also lightly garlic salted and peppered the veggies once while grilling them. Grilling veggies can always present a problem if you don't have some sort of way to keep them from going through the grill. I have a grill basket and a flat cast iron griddle that has the grill marks on one side. It took about at least 20 minutes to grill the veggies, but well worth the time! (The asparagus goes last because it cooks so fast) I served over brown rice but it is great with couscous as well! Assemble in the kitchen.... a ladle of rice or couscous, lots of veggies, a ladle or two of sauce, then I used the asparagus as a decoration. PS. I also served a grilled vegan Italian sausage brat with it and garlic bread! Yum Yum

This was pretty good with a few changes. First, I had to use chick peas instead of broad beans, and that actually worked out very well. That was strictly because I could not find broad/fava beans this time of year - I've never seen frozen ones and don't like canned, but love fresh. I also cooked the couscous according to package directions - bringing 1 cup vegetable stock, 1 tbsp olive oil (or butter) to a boil, stir in couscous, remove from heat, cover and let sit five minutes. Otherwise, this dish just needed about 3 cloves of garlic and some fresh oregano and basil for more flavor. It was kind of a pain, cooking all the vegetables - I only had a small grill pan, but that actually worked out well since the eggplant, zucchini and peppers/onions all needed various cooking times - I did them in batches, so it worked for me. My only other issue was I didn't seem to have enough sauce - I'll double the tomatoes if I make this again, and leave the vinegar as is. When I served it, the couscous was really dry underneath the vegetables - it would have been better if there was enough liquid to trickle down and flavor the couscous. Finally, I didn't, but someone mentioned adding goat cheese to this - THAT, along with more seasonings and increasing the sauce, would make this a total 5-star recipe in my book! Next time....

This was pretty good with a few changes. First, I had to use chick peas instead of broad beans, and that actually worked out very well. That was strictly because I could not find broad/fava beans this time of year - I've never seen frozen ones and don't like canned, but love fresh. I also cooked the couscous according to package directions - bringing 1 cup vegetable stock, 1 tbsp olive oil (or butter) to a boil, stir in couscous, remove from heat, cover and let sit five minutes. Otherwise, this dish just needed about 3 cloves of garlic and some fresh oregano and basil for more flavor. It was kind of a pain, cooking all the vegetables - I only had a small grill pan, but that actually worked out well since the eggplant, zucchini and peppers/onions all needed various cooking times - I did them in batches, so it worked for me. My only other issue was I didn't seem to have enough sauce - I'll double the tomatoes if I make this again, and leave the vinegar as is. When I served it, the couscous was really dry underneath the vegetables - it would have been better if there was enough liquid to trickle down and flavor the couscous. Finally, I didn't, but someone mentioned adding goat cheese to this - THAT, along with more seasonings and increasing the sauce, would make this a total 5-star recipe in my book! Next time....