I realise it seems a shame but use a collander and drain off the cooked produce into another saucepan. Empty the cooked food into a clean saucepan. Add the half coffeecup of cous cous to the mixture which will seem quite wet and stir it in with a long handled wooden spoon. If you think it isn't quite wet enough to absorb the cous cous, add half a coffeecup of the mixture you drained off. Put a lid on the saucepan and leave it. I wondered about using lychees in this recipe because of their consistency and their sweetness but decided on whole mushrooms. Whilst all of this is happening, remove the skins from all of one and a half of the whole garlic cloves and trim them up. Then slice the garlic very thinly. Find a microwave safe container and half fill it with cold water. Add all of the sliced garlic and the ginger puree and the tomato puree and give it a gentle stir. The microwave container i used was the type that you might buy microwaveable soups in from a supermartket so it is quite sturdy and has a lid which does not fall off easily and is microwave safe (you might like to check that it is before using it please). Then after maybe 30 minutes or even longer, stir in the microwave container ingredients to the saucepan ingredients. Put the lid back on. It is quite possible that the saucepan ingredients are still not cooled anyway but it is ok. Make sure that you stir in carefully and add the drained water chestnuts. One of the photos shows some fresh ginger root with a lemon but, ginger puree was actually used in this recipe'.