The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [152]
The Last Undiscovered Cuisine
Q What will next year’s food of the moment be?
A. My candidate, admittedly a long shot, is Visigoth cuisine. The Visigoths ruled Europe from Gibraltar to the Rhône for 250 years after the Fall of Rome, until the Arabs forced them out of Spain in 711. History has dealt the Visigoths an unfair hand, picturing them as rude barbarians vaguely connected with the destruction of European civilization. Sure they were, but consider their accomplishments. Their laws, written in Latin, strongly influenced South American jurisprudence. They became Christians as early as the sixth century, setting a fine example for the much later Spanish Inquisition by forcing the Jews to accept baptism in the year 600. And most important, their sweet-and-sour cooking left its mark throughout southwest France and Iberia, especially in Catalonia. Yet you will search in vain for a Visigoth cookbook, restaurant, or food shop. It is the last undiscovered cuisine of Europe, and its day may now have come.
Paula seems to breathe in recipes the way I breathe in air. By the time we had left Jerba for the mainland, her notebook was bursting. On her previous trip to Tunisia, in the city of Sfax, Paula had heard about a meatless couscous dish flavored with fennel greens, onions, and spices. Fennel was out of season then and in season now, and when we arrived in Tunisia, Paula immediately began asking people about it.
Behind my back—I believe that I was engaged in a restorative nap—Paula had somehow managed to interview Aziza Ben Tanfous, curator at the Sidi Zitouni museum on Jerba, and snagged a terrific recipe for the dish. Tanfous had given us a lecture about the food and agriculture of the Berbers. These were the aboriginal inhabitants who dominated North Africa long before successive migrations and invasions of the Phoenicians (with whom the Jews arrived), Romans and Vandals, Arabs, Turks, and French. The Berbers are said to have invented couscous, originally made from barley instead of the hard wheat that was discovered in Abyssinia or Eritrea many centuries later. How Paula knew that Tanfous had a grandmother who made the perfect version of couscous with fennel greens, I will never understand. But a grandmother she certainly had.
Couscous is, for want of a better description, a form of tiny pasta. When couscous is formed by hand, the artisan places coarse semolina flour on a broad, round tray, adding small amounts of water and fine semolina flour as she slowly rubs the surface of the mixture with her palms in a repeated circular motion. Soon the fine semolina and water begin to collect around the grains of coarse semolina, and little balls of couscous begin to appear. Twenty minutes later, when the process has been completed and nearly all the flour has been formed into couscous, the pellets are sieved to ensure that they are all about the same size, then steamed and dried in the sun and packed away for future use.
To prepare couscous for eating, whether it is hand- or commercially made, you bring water or a spiced broth to a boil in the bottom of a steamer; then you soak the grains of couscous in water and place them into the top of the steamer (which is perforated like a colander and always kept uncovered in Moroccan kitchens and mostly covered in Tunisia). The steam and wetness of the couscous prevent it from falling through the holes in the steamer, and soon the grains swell and become light and digestible. Never cook it in boiling water unless you are following one of those rare recipes (usually requiring a very fine couscous unavailable in the United States) that traditionally call for an alternative to steaming.
Paula insists that to prepare the best and lightest couscous, you must steam it twice. (Her first book, the product of seven years spent in Morocco, is called