West Africa · Volume 22, The Three Glasses, the Mullet Run and the Grain Rolled by Hand
Couscous al-aish
Mauritania
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 25 sources in the brief
Couscous al-aish is the Mauritanian wedding and festival dish: wheat grain rolled by hand, steamed, and left to absorb a hot broth of meat and onion. Falleh, a Nouakchott seller, described it to Sky News Arabia: she buys the base of small wheat paste grains, rolls them in a wide dish with flour until the grain forms, sprinkles them with oil, adds taqiya, and steams them in a semicircular perforated dish with a cloth for the steam to pass; the meat is cooked with onion and the hot broth poured over the grain to be absorbed. An Emirati paper adds that the grain is first toasted in clarified butter. No source this chapter reached gives a ratio or a steaming time.
As tradition built it
Serves a wedding. Steamed several times.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- wheat or barley semolina, the base grain
- as needed flour, for rolling
- oil
- taqiya, dried mallow leaf powder
- meat, lamb or camel
- onion
- clarified butter
- as needed water
- to taste salt
Method
- Roll the semolina in a wide dish with flour, wetting and working it, until it forms small even grains. Sprinkle with oil and work in the taqiya.
- Cook the meat with onion and salt in water to make the broth.
- Steam the grain in a perforated vessel lined with cloth over the broth, repeatedly, breaking it up between steamings.
- Toss the steamed grain with clarified butter, pour the hot broth over so the grain drinks it, and serve with the meat.
What a modern chef changes
The grain rolled, not bought
Rung 2
Method
- Roll the grain from fine and coarse semolina by hand with salted water, a few drops at a time, and pass it through two sieves so every grain is the same size; the supermarket packet is a different food.
- Steam it three times for the time the grain needs and not a clock, rubbing it with butter between steamings, and judge it by the hand: it is done when it falls apart warm and dry.
- Dry the mallow leaf in the dehydrator and grind it for the taqiya, from mallow grown or foraged, since no shop sells it.
- Make the broth from a camel's or a mutton's bones for hours and reduce it, so the grain drinks flavour and not water.