Grilled Couscous Houmous Salad Wrap with Chilli Sauce

Well, Happy New Year everyone!!! I hope you all had a great Christmas and holidays, we had a nice quiet relaxed one this year. As you can tell I decided to not blog over the holidays and as much as I love blogging, it was lovely! It's nice sometimes to not have to set up a photo shoot every time you eat ;-) Plus I got a nasty cold on Christmas Eve which is still plaguing me, gutted as I seriously have not had a cold in years! 

So it's on with the healthy eating! Of course we are always pretty healthy anyway, a wonderful side effect of being vegan, but I am going to make a concerted effort this year to reduce the sugar. This will mean less baking of course which is something I love but we really do need to cut back. So hopefully there will be a bit more healthy savoury dishes this year and maybe even some healthy baking options with wholegrain flour and no white refined sugars :-)

Now, this wrap has become one of our absolute favourites. Whenever we go into Cork we almost always get the Lebanese Houmous Salad Wrap, grilled, from Cafe Gusto. It's absolutely amazing and comes with this incredible chilli sauce which we almost always ask for more of it's so good! I knew pretty quickly I was going to have to try and recreate this wrap and this is my take on it. While it's certainly not spot on, it's pretty damn close and equally as delicious. 

The only thing I couldn't even get my head around was the chilli sauce, we contacted them to find out if it can be bought but they make their own. Thankfully I found something really close to it - Blue Dragon's Chilli and Garlic Sauce, it's more garlicky for sure but otherwise really close and really makes this wrap, I wouldn't have it without it. So if you can find that brand do pick it up if you make this, if not any smooth chilli sauce for dipping (i.e - not a lethally hot chilli sauce meant as an ingredient) should do well here.

With the chilli sauce as a dip on the side, I  used to do these like this, now I tend to always put the sauce inside as it's easier to eat 

Grilled Couscous Houmous Salad Wrap with Chilli Sauce: 

50g couscous, dry weight

vegetable stock, cube or granules, I used 1/4 of a Kallo Organic Tomato and Herb Cube.

100ml water

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red onion, diced - or shallots or spring onion.

tomato, diced

red or yellow pepper, diced 

cucumber, sliced thin and halved - optional

lettuce

houmous, store bought or homemade

large wraps, any flavour, these are half white/wheat. Pitta bread would be nice too!

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Blue Dragon's Chilli and Garlic Sauce, or similar.

The wrap takes a little forward planning as you need to make the couscous first, I usually let it cool to room temperature but it's not essential, the wrap is being heated anyway. The quantity here makes enough for 3 wraps but it's nice to have leftover extra cooked couscous in the fridge so you can whip up this wrap quickly.

Bring the water and stock cube/granules to the boil. Measure out the couscous in a shallow wide dish and pour over the boiling stock, stir and quickly cover the dish with cling film and leave for 5 minutes to absorb the stock. Fluff with a fork then scrape into a bowl to let cool. Keep fluffing it now and again so it doesn't clump together.

Take a wrap and quickly warm it on a dry hot frying pan, this will make it more pliable to wrap. Place on a flat surface and add about 2 Tbsp or 30g of houmous, spread it out along the centre of the wrap. Spoon some couscous over the houmous, again about 2 Tbsp or 40g. Top this with the tomato, pepper, onion and cucumber. Top with lettuce now and wrap it up by first folding in the sides then rolling it up as tightly as you can. 

It's good to eat now but we love it toasted, to do this get a grill pan really hot and place it first seam side down and give it a gentle press, when it has grill lines flip it over and do the same on the other side. It's important that the pan is really hot here as you just want to quickly grill this, any longer and you'll end up with hot wilted lettuce, not a good thing!

Remove, slice with a serrated knife on the diagonal and serve with about a tablespoon of chilli sauce. Enjoy!

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Nutritional Information - approximately, depends on houmous and wraps used

based on 1 wrap with 1 Tbsp sauce.

Calories: 373

Protein: 9.2g

Fat: 15.8g

Sat Fat: 3.4g

Fibre: 3.9g

Carbs: 43.7g

Sugar: 5.9g

Sodium: 738 mg

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Tricolore Griddled Wrap

Watercress and Houmous on Rye

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