tuna-and-orange lettuce cups with couscous cakes

I got a little side-tracked from blogging while on vacation, so to catch-up I must post about our last Thursday night dinner of Tuna-and-Orange Lettuce Cups with Couscous Cakes. Again this was from the July/August 2011 issue of Everyday Food magazine. Who ever came up with the idea to concoct something like this? Just to explain because no photo could do complete justice to illustrating what this dinner is.

This is a boston lettuce wrap with crunchy slices of fennel, slices of oranges, seasoned tuna topped with a herbed couscous cake. Odd, yes, delicious? Totally! It's so strange but it really works. Now, if you take a bite missing any one of the ingredients, it's just not the same. This was really great when you had everything at once. By no stretch is this the sort of dinner that springs to mind if guests are coming over for dinner, but it's a great light mid-week dinner. In fact, I think this would have been a great recipe to have been published in Everyday Food Light's cookbook. It's quite different, interesting, healthy and light.

I was a little surprised with how much time it took to make this dinner. The couscous was leftover from Tuesday night's dinner, so that was taken care of, but frying batches of cakes took quite some time. Our basil was on its last leg, so I wasn't able to use as much as the recipe called for, so I just threw in some parsley and cilantro we had in the crisper and it tasted fantastic. I'd definitely recommend using whatever herbs you enjoy in these cakes.