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Although we've enjoyed couscous on many occasions, we never knew exactly what we were eating. However, when looking for the answer to the question, we realized you might be asking what country the dish comes from. That's why we decided to answer both questions. We hoped to find an answer at our favorite food-related site: Epicurious.com. From the front page, we headed straight to the Food Dictionary and searched on "couscous." The resulting definition was a veritable smorgasbord of answers. We learned that couscous, a staple of North African cuisine, is granular semolina, the
main ingredient in pasta. The term couscous also refers to the famous Maghreb dish in which semolina or cracked wheat is steamed in the perforated top part of a special pot (called a couscoussière), while chunks of meat (usually lamb or chicken), various vegetables, chickpeas, and raisins simmer in the bottom part. The cooked semolina is heaped onto a platter, with the meats and vegetables placed on top. We also discovered that couscous varies from country to country -- Moroccans often include saffron, Algerians like to add tomatoes, and Tunisians spice up theirs with flavorful hot-pepper Harisa sauce.
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