COUSCOUS, ANYONE?
That's pronounced “koos-koos”, or did you already know that?
I did not.
That is one of the cook-book mysteries which has haunted me for years and I finally got round to “google-izing” it last week... (I wonder how long it will take for that term to edge itself into our wonderful, expandable English language!)
As I suspected, it proved to be a pasta with varied uses in cookery of the Mid-Eastern and African countries.
The dictionaries give two definitions. The prime one, I found, is not exactly helpful in that it tells me couscous is a substance which comes from grinding “semalina”. Very helpful. What, pray tell, is sem-a-lina”? Definition two usually enlarges on that idea and spells out that semolina is the bran portion of a wheat grain left when flour is extracted. We might call it “bran”, I suppose, but if we are going to all the trouble of finding out that the proper ways of saying it are, I'd like to go right on pretending if I had know what that all along the way. One example of semalina flour currently available on the general western market is “Cream of Wheat,” but not in the one-minute, hurry up version. It makes an acceptable couscous.
The chefs who make couscous are said to whip up a real batch of it when they are in the mood because a primary way of using it is as a dried form as an additive. It can be used in a wide variety of dishes. Couscous (I have heard people call it “conscious” - like the guilt factor in our psyche , but I think they are confusing it with another such preparation from the cook-lore books of the Appalachian mountains here in America.)... whatever you end up calling it is worth making.
It is, basically, what you get you when you boil semalina in water. Others, I find, add “flesh”...meat juices as well as vegetables and spices. As it cooks down it is rolled back and forth in the pan until it forms pellets. Eastern cooks then use these pasta pellets - usually after the beads have been dried - to form a bed or pasta pad in the pan upon which other foods are steamed or cooked. Since the exact nature of couscous remains somewhat vague it is the sort of ingredient you have to learn to play “by palate” so to speak. It is widely used by vegetarians, but many couscous makers like to keep a chunk of lamb, or other meat, in the steam area while the pasta is being cooked and rolled down. Some actually add bits of meat and spices.
There seems to be no set limitations as to what constitutes a proper topping for couscous. What goes in top varies from country to country depending on what is most frequently available. Regular pasta toppings would be proper, I suppose and when no such tripping are to be found, couscous can be eaten as a hot cereal or porridge is often the case in more primitive areas . Now that I know what it is, I'm going to investigate the possibilities of this type of pasta.
I find I have always been wary of eating things I can't pronounce.
A.L.M. August 29, 2003 [c513wds]
