Marrakesh express

COUSCOUS is one of the world’s most extraordinary foods, more delicate than any gnocchi, light as a snowdrift.

It’s also terribly misunderstood.

More than just the stuff that comes out of a box, couscous is a whole world of wonderful dishes: sublime stews spooned over the ethereal granules. They can be as luscious as pappardelle with rabbit ragu or as carefully harmonic as a great pesto. But they also have exotic allure. It might be long-simmered lamb and pumpkin with ginger and saffron, or loup de mer with quince, or perhaps veal and chicken with zucchini and almonds. Chickpeas frequently make an appearance, as do raisins, almonds, dates and spices such as cinnamon and coriander.

“You can push the parameters of couscous the same way you can push pasta,” says Paula Wolfert, author of “Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco.” “The difference is the couscous grain. Pasta can’t compare with it in delicacy.”

It’s odd that couscous has never caught on here in L.A., despite the Moroccan restaurants that have been part of our dining scene since the ‘70s. A town that can fall so hard for pasta ought to be able to see the glory of couscous.

A man who’s keenly sensitive to the possibilities of couscous is Adel Chagar of Chameau restaurant, probably L.A.’s leading Moroccan chef these days. Most Moroccan restaurants stick to tried-and-true favorites, but he has an inventive, contemporary take on the cuisine he inherits. He puts fashionable duck in his otherwise hyper-traditional bestila (he makes that savory pie with warqa, the crisper hand-made North African cousin of filo). He turns preserved lemons into a dip, serves merguez sausage with chickpea fries and offers almond beignets with lemon cream and honey ice cream for dessert.

The decor of his Fairfax Avenue place is just as contemporary as the food -- think Morocco through a psychedelic kaleidoscope. A whimsical representation of a camel’s eyelash runs the length of the ceiling. No hand-washing ritual or belly dancer here. And the menu is seasonal. At the moment, one of Chagar’s most impressive dishes is an aromatic lamb shoulder tagine that he serves over delicate vegetable couscous.

Alongside his couscous entrees, he also has side-dish versions of couscous flavored with raisins or pearl onions, none of which is traditional. “Well, of course, this is why we’re not in Morocco,” he joshes.

Michel Ohayon, proprietor of the 27-year-old Koutoubia in Westwood, was the first Moroccan restaurateur in our town to let diners choose their own dishes, rather than forcing everybody at a table to order the same things. But Koutoubia still represents the grand, traditional style of Moroccan restaurant, with the pillows and the belly dancer and the mint tea poured into tiny cups from on high.

And the dishes on the menu are mostly classics, though he has served specials like lamb with fresh fennel. The most traditional element of all is his mother, Gilberte, who cooks the couscous most nights, as she has for decades, with the expertise of a lifetime’s experience.

“My grandmother taught me to make it in Morocco,” she says. “When you steam it two times, it’s very healthy. It’s so soft, you don’t have to put anything on it -- just sugar and cinnamon if you want.”

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North African staple

IN North Africa, couscous is the centerpiece of the traditional Friday family lunch. It’s always the last thing served at a banquet or a party, where it occupies the place of dessert, the course that makes sure every guest’s appetite is completely satisfied.

And in some parts of Morocco, it’s even more basic than that. The local word for couscous in those places is ta’am, which literally means “food.”

As a culinary region, North Africa is a mosaic of regional styles that don’t always fit neatly into national borders. But Morocco is the only Arab country that was never absorbed by the Ottoman Empire, so for centuries it has continued to have its own kings, who have sponsored an impressive court cuisine. As a result, Moroccan couscous, which is represented in most of our North African restaurants, tends to be served with rich stews aromatic with multiple spices, particularly in Marrakesh. Saffron is the most glamorous of them, but ginger, cinnamon, coriander and turmeric add their fragrance.

Algeria is an agricultural country with a robust, rustic cuisine, and the stews that accompany its couscous are typically less refined than in Morocco. During the 1960s, there was a craze for Algerian restaurants in Paris, and as a result, people who have fallen in love with couscous in France expect the Algerian hot sauce harissa with North African food, even at Moroccan restaurants. The practice of serving couscous, stewed meat and broth in separate bowls, rather than on a single plate, is also Algerian. As for Tunisia, it has the richest fishing grounds of any Arab country, so it makes a specialty of fish couscous dishes.

Couscous with seven vegetables (couscous a sept legumes) is a North African classic, assumed to be Moroccan though it’s also made in Algeria. There’s a lot of dispute about the correct seven vegetables that have to be included: Everybody seems to agree on tomatoes, turnips, carrots, zucchini and pumpkin, but what about peppers, cabbage, eggplant or fava beans? People also argue about which Moroccan city originated it: Fez, famous for its subtle and sophisticated cuisine, or Rabat, where seven-vegetable couscous is considered the “national dish.”

Fez is certainly the home of some wonderful cooking, but Chagar -- who happens to be a Rabati -- is skeptical of its claim. “Fez is one of the oldest cities,” he says, “so they think everything comes from there.”

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Steam works magic

IF we saw couscous in this setting, as the fluffy, ethereal accompaniment to richly flavored North African stews, we’d treat it with proper respect. Unfortunately, we’ve come to think of it as a convenience food -- a pre-cooked grain that you pour from the box into a bowl and just add hot water. The result is edible, but it’s a pale shadow of real couscous.

The essential thing about real couscous is that it is steamed. Not soaked in hot water, as the recipe on the couscous package tells you to do. Steaming makes all the difference.

Why is couscous steamed? Because of the way it’s made, by sprinkling drops of water into a bowl of durum semolina and stirring it until granules form. It’s not kneaded at any point, so the granules are not held together by gluten, the way pasta is.

This means couscous can’t be boiled without turning into mush, but it’s also the reason for its delicacy. The couscous granules have none of the rugged texture that comes from gluten and, when they’re steamed, they can swell much more than pasta ever could.

“I can get 16 to 18 cups of cooked couscous out of a pound of dry by steaming,” says Wolfert. “But following the box instruction -- just leaving the couscous to soak in hot water -- I get only six cups.”

Six cups versus 16. That’s the difference between something that’s merely edible and something that has passed the ordinary bonds of food, becoming supernally light and fluffy.

During the 19th century, a company in colonial Algeria took the fateful step of marketing something called couscous rapide. Cooks had always dried some of their couscous for using later, but for this new product the granules were steamed before drying, so that the starch in the semolina was already cooked, as in bulgur wheat.

Still, if the cook steamed couscous rapide properly, it produced a good, fluffy result, so it became a pantry staple in North African households. And restaurants, for that matter.

But they don’t soak it in hot water. They begin by moistening the granules with cold water. “The couscous grains should never touch hot water,” Chagar says. “That makes it soggy.”

Then they steam it. In North Africa, this is done in a special pot called a couscoussier, where the couscous cooks in a perforated pot set over the stew that it will be served with.

Steaming over the stew is done in North Africa because it saves on firewood, a crucial consideration in the local economy. Some people say the couscous also picks up a subtle flavor from the stew, but Wolfert dismisses this.

“I no longer believe in steaming over the stew,” she says. “You have much better control over your ingredients if you can watch them as they cook.” From a cooking standpoint, it’s better to cook the stew in one pot and steam the couscous over water in another.

It’s easy to improvise a couscoussier by fitting a colander or Chinese steamer over a spaghetti pot. Remember that the couscous should never touch hot water, so be sure there’s at least half an inch of space between the colander and the water’s surface.

The two parts of a metal couscoussier fit tightly, but if you use a colander you may have to create a seal, as Moroccans do when they use clay couscoussiers. In the Times Test Kitchen, we got a steamer basket to fit quite snugly without help; if it’s not a good fit, take a strip of cheesecloth, moisten it, sprinkle it generously with flour and shake it off. Fit this around the rim of the pot and seat your colander on top of it. The steam will turn the flour into a paste that makes an effective seal.

Before steaming, the couscous granules are moistened with cold water and allowed to rest, then rubbed between the fingers to break up any lumps and moistened with a little oil or butter so they’ll stay separate as they cook. When steam starts coming out of the colander, transfer the couscous into it and steam for 20 minutes.

Then take the couscous out and, when it’s cool enough to handle, repeat the process of moistening and separating. Steam the couscous again at least once. “Cook it as much as you can without it becoming soggy,” says Chagar. “At Chameau, we steam it three times.”

After steaming it the last time, moisten it with broth and let it sit 10 minutes before you serve it.

Obviously, this takes longer than pouring the package into hot water. But it’s not really that much work, and the result will be much more enjoyable. (Speaking of enjoyment, Moroccans say that under-steamed couscous -- and this would go double for pour-it-into-hot-water couscous -- swells up in your stomach. “Think about, it,” Wolfert says. “That grain could have swelled to 16 or 18 cups. It’s got room to grow, so it’s going to grow somewhere. It’s going to grow in your stomach.”)

If the idea of two or three 20-minute steamings with a little work in between sounds daunting, cookbook author Anya von Bremzen suggests that you could make the stew the day before -- it would even improve overnight, as stews tend to. Because couscous tends to be a complete meal, with meat and vegetables, that leaves nothing but the couscous to do the next day.

When the couscous is done, arrange it on the serving plate, moisten with a bit of flavorful broth and arrange the meat and/or vegetables in the middle.

You’ll be able to enjoy one of the great delicacies: a perfumed stew accompanied by an elegant mound of ethereal granules that seem to drift into your mouth on their own.

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Couscous with seven vegetables

Total time: 2 hours, 50 minutes

Servings: 8

Note: From “The Greatest Dishes! Around the World in 80 Recipes” by Anya von Bremzen

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon mild olive oil

2 large onions, quartered and sliced

2 pounds skinless chicken thighs

2 pounds veal or lamb shanks, hacked into 3/4 - to 1-inch sections, or meaty lamb neck

2 1/2 quarts water

2 large tomatoes, peeled,

seeded and quartered

(about 2 cups)

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 (3-inch) cinnamon sticks

1 teaspoon mild paprika

Large pinch cayenne, or more to taste

Large pinch saffron threads, toasted and pulverized in

a mortar

10 sprigs each parsley and

cilantro, tied into a

cheesecloth bag

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 fat carrots, scraped,

quartered and cut into

2-inch lengths

3 medium turnips or boiling

potatoes, peeled and

quartered

3 fat celery ribs, cut into

2-inch sections, or 1 medium fennel bulb

with a little of the stalk,

cut into large chunks (scrape the outer layer

of the fennel bulb if it is tough)

2 large zucchini, halved and cut into 2-inch sections

1 pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 3-inch pieces

2 cups canned chickpeas, drained

1 recipe steamed couscous (see Page 4)

Harissa or another pure chile paste

1. In a heavy stockpot, heat the butter with the oil over medium heat and saute the onions, stirring, for 5 minutes.

2. Add the chicken and the veal or lamb and cook, turning the meats, until they are opaque, about 5 minutes per side.

3. Add the water, tomatoes, ginger, cinnamon sticks, paprika, cayenne, saffron, the bag of parsley and cilantro, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, skim off the foam, cover and simmer over low heat until the chicken is tender, 45 to 50 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the chicken to a bowl so it doesn’t overcook. Cover and keep warm.

4. Continue cooking the broth until the veal or lamb is tender, about 1 hour longer. (While the meat is cooking, start preparing the couscous.) Remove the meat.

5. Add the carrots, turnips and celery to the broth. Raise the heat until it comes to a simmer, then lower the heat and cook for 15 minutes.

6. Add the zucchini, squash and chickpeas; raise the heat again until the liquid returns to a simmer. Lower the heat and cook until the vegetables are tender but not mushy, about 20 minutes more. As vegetables are done, remove them to a bowl.

7. Return the chicken and meat to the pot until warmed through and adjust seasonings to taste. Discard the cheesecloth bag. (The broth and vegetables can be prepared a day ahead.)

8. If necessary, reheat the broth, meats and vegetables. Mound the steamed couscous on a large platter. Make a big well in the middle and pile some of the vegetables into it. Arrange the meat and chicken around the couscous and scatter chickpeas around it. Moisten with about 1 cup of the broth. If you like, mix 1 cup broth with 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons harissa to serve on the side. Serve the rest of the vegetables and broth in a large, deep bowl, accompanied by the harissa.

Each serving (without couscous): 374 calories; 36 grams protein; 27 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams fiber; 14 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 121 mg. cholesterol; 1,101 mg. sodium.

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Lamb tagine

Total time: 2 1/2 hours plus overnight refrigeration

Servings: 8

Note: From Adel Chagar of

Chameau

Raisin garnish

2 tablespoons ( 1/4 stick) butter

1 cup golden raisins

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 cup chicken stock

1/2 star anise

1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add the raisins. Stir to coat with the butter. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add the honey, lemon juice, chicken stock, star anise, cinnamon stick and salt. Cook slowly over low heat until almost all of the liquid has evaporated and the raisins are plump, about 20 minutes. Set aside.

Lamb and assembly

4 pounds lamb shoulder

Sea salt, pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons canola oil

1 medium onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon saffron

Moroccan spice mixture ( 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/8 teaspoon saffron, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric)

2 celery stalks, sliced into 2-inch pieces

2 carrots, peeled and sliced into 2-inch pieces

1/2 pound canned whole tomatoes, crushed

8 sprigs parsley, tied with kitchen twine

8sprigs cilantro, tied with kitchen twine

1 1/2 cinnamon sticks

10 cups chicken stock

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 recipe steamed couscous (see Page 4)

Raisin garnish

Harissa, optional

1. Cut the lamb into 3-inch pieces and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate overnight.

2. Put the oils in a large Dutch oven, bring to high heat, add the lamb chunks in bunches and brown. Remove the lamb, reduce heat to medium, add the onions and garlic and saute until tender.

3. Add the saffron, spice mixture, celery and carrots and cook 10 minutes.

4. Add the tomatoes, parsley, cilantro, cinnamon, chicken stock and tomato paste and bring to a boil. Add the lamb back into the pot.

5. Cover the pot, put in a 350-degree oven and cook until the lamb is completely cooked, about 1 1/2 hours. Serve with couscous, raisin garnish and harissa, if desired.

Each serving (without couscous, with 1 tablespoon garnish): 732 calories; 50 grams protein; 16 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 47 grams fat; 15 grams saturated fat; 179 mg. cholesterol; 847 mg. sodium.

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Steamed couscous

Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Servings: 8 (about 13 cups)

Note: From “The Greatest Dishes! Around the World in 80 Recipes” by Anya von Bremzen

4 cups (1 1/2 pounds) fine or medium couscous

Mild olive oil

2 to 3 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter ( 1/4 to 3/8 stick) cut into small pieces

1. Place the couscous in a sieve fine enough to hold all the grains. Place the sieve under cold running water and wet the couscous thoroughly. Spread it out in a thick layer on a large rimmed baking sheet (ideally 16 to 18 inches wide) or in a huge wooden salad bowl. Let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes to absorb the moisture.

2. Evenly sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of oil over the couscous and work the oil into the grains with your fingers. Take a small handful of grains and rub them between your thumb and two middle fingers to get rid of all the little lumps. As you work, lift the grains up, letting them drop back into the sheet. Alternatively, work over another large bowl to keep track of what’s been worked over. Repeat with all the couscous.

3. Oil the perforated top of a couscousiere or a large wide steamer. In the bottom part, bring 4 to 5 inches of water to a rolling boil. If there is a lot of steam escaping through the seam between the two parts, seal it with foil. When you see a good deal of steam rising up, transfer the couscous to the top part and steam uncovered for 15 to 18 minutes.

4. Return the couscous to the baking sheet and spread it out again, breaking the lumps with a fork, and let cool until just manageable. In a measuring cup, combine 2 cups water and salt, and sprinkle evenly and gradually over the couscous, working the water in with your fingers. Spread it out again and let stand for another 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Oil your hands and repeat the procedure in Step 4. Steam again as in previous step for about 15 minutes. By now, the grains will be fluffy and separate and slightly al dente. If not planning to steam couscous for a third time (instructions follow), steam it now for about 20 to 30 minutes until tender.

6. If steaming for a third time, return the couscous to the baking sheet, work in 1 more cup of water, spread it out again and let stand until ready for the final steaming. Before steaming, rub it again to remove lumps and steam one final time, 12 to 15 minutes.

6. Turn off the heat and leave the couscous in the steamer. Carefully stir in the butter, using a fork to break up any lumps that might have formed.

Each serving: 386 calories; 11 grams protein; 67 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams fiber; 7 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 9 mg. cholesterol; 299 mg. sodium.