The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [86]
As he described the painstaking process of gently massaging the grains by hand, setting them out on a wide, flat surface, then kneading them again to give them the proper texture and firmness, I could hardly believe what I was writing down. Wasn’t couscous just supposed to be drenched with hot water and left to sit for five minutes until done? This sounded like an obscene amount of prep work, and for what payoff, I didn’t know.
I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about over couscous then, and Jordan and I certainly didn’t get it when we were served a bland, dry couscous on our first day in Marrakesh. The British and Australians in our cooking class didn’t seem to understand, either, and one of them commented on how the vegetables in couscous he had seen were so overcooked as to look “sad.” But at a rooftop restaurant during a stop in the mountains, I decided to give the dish another try and noticed a distinctly satisfying lightness to the flavors in it that time. Then, after cooking my own vegetable couscous at home following Mohammed’s directions, I think I finally got it.
Couscous was not something to be tucked away underneath chicken or a lamb chop, or swept to the side of the plate in a measly portion. It was in itself the main attraction in Moroccan meals, when cooked with the right care. Mohammed’s recipe began by searing a bit of shoulder meat (preferably lamb) with bones in a large pot, for flavor. To that he added a sliced onion and spoonfuls of spices, followed with a chopped tomato. After twenty minutes of cooking, the pot was filled with cold water, large chunks of turnip, parsnip, and carrots, and a bunch of fresh cilantro and other herbs as desired.
In the meantime, the couscous was sprinkled with just a tiny bit of water and oil, gently mixed by hand, and spread flat on a plate to dry. Next, one had to break up the clumps by hand thoroughly, then transfer the little grains to a steamer rack placed on top of the pot. The idea is that the grains, held together by moisture to prevent them from slipping through the steamer rack’s holes, would absorb the soup’s flavors as it steamed above it. I didn’t have a steamer and substituted a metal colander that fit nicely on top of my biggest pot. And even though I was worried because the holes in it were quite large, true to Mohammed’s instructions, the couscous didn’t fall through much at all. By the time the couscous was fully cooked half an hour later, my entire apartment smelled of the most wonderful broth in the world.
That leftover broth turned out to be my mother and Jo-Jo’s favorite part of the meal. Because of Jo-Jo’s fast, I skipped the addition of lamb shoulder for flavor in the recipe. Still, those turnips and root vegetables had simmered for a deeply savory, soothing stock with a rich golden hue and almost floral subtleties in flavor. Steamed with this stock, the couscous fell to the plate in moist, yet separate grains and had a delicate firmness of texture. Mimicking what I’d seen done in Morocco, I’d piled the couscous in a great, pointed dome and arranged the cooked vegetables around it like campfire logs. I poured a ladle of hot broth over the heaped dish, and then it was ready to serve.
After polishing off this course, along with the roasted-pepper dip, eggplant, and half a loaf of homemade bread, we sat around the small kitchen table in my apartment with the scraped dishes. My mom and uncle helped themselves to seconds and thirds of the vegetable broth and held their soup bowls close like cups of tea as we continued to talk. Ben had made a point of staying out of the apartment that evening, and I’d told them that he was merely out with friends.
Looking down at his bowl of soup, focused in thought, my uncle uttered his first words about Gong-Gong’s death. He had been in the hospital room with him when the nurses told Jo-Jo it was almost time. Gong-Gong’s heart reading had dropped to its faintest, most infrequent beat. My uncle had gotten down on his knees to pray to