Hi guys

There are so many variations of how to cook couscous on the internet & books I have ie add couscous to a stock to adding hot water to couscous and covering etc

I have never made it before and my wife has asked me to give it a go.

She can be quite fussy and if I don;t get it near right then it will put her off.

I know from my own experiences of eating couscous that it can be bland sometimes and the taste/texture varies.

Any advice/tips would be very much appreciated

CW

Cous-Cous is a very good ingredient ...

I can spend a good couple of hours making something with it, or 5 minutes !

Easist way is just cover with a little chicken/veg stock (ie get a stockpot/stockcube and mix with hot water from the kettle). Use a large bowl, pour in the cous-cous and then cover over with about the same height again of the hot stock

This I would then allow to go cold and mix in crispy salad (spring onions, cucumber, grated carrot, cherry tomatoes etc) and it makes a great cold lunch

The other way would be to roast of some veg (like peppers, carrots, onions, garlic etc) and some herbs and spice, then mix in cous-cous and cover with more stock (mix in extras like tomato pur?e.

There are recipes here on MamtasKitchen, Couscous Salad - 4, Vegetarian or with Chicken/Meat

Steve

Thanks Steve

Looking to use it hot, alongside a pork chop or breast of chicken.

Plan on making tomorrow night so have time to ponder

CW

I think couscous is one of those things one needs to treat as a part of a combination, not to consider it on its own, a bit like plain boiled rice. So often in cooking of the Maghreb (Arabic: المغرب العربي , Berber: Tamazgha) couscous will be served with a rich spicy gravy and lamb (or more recently chicken) or with vegetables as in 'sept legume', a national dish.

So it needs thinking about what one is going to serve it with. It has a very mild pleasant flavour, which tends to rest a little easier on the old tum than plain boiled rice, I have found. Meats would need a spicy gravy, to be mopped up by the couscous, or else fresh salad type veg added for a light salad dish.

I have used many different brands of couscous (the ones where one just adds boiling water, and wait for it to be absorbed). Some taste like the cardboard box they come in, but has nothing to do with picking up that flavour from the paper product! The best I have found to date is from dear old Tesco's. I add boiling water or meat stock which covers the couscous by about a cm or two, its not a science for me, yet. I have seen that the ratio of couscous:water should be 1:2, but I have seen that for rice, too, and that is definitely 1:1 !!

It may take a little practice to get the couscous just so, but, like perfect basmati rice (by the absorption method) needs a little practice to get just right!

At least, with couscous, if you add too much liquid, you can always pour the excess off, most of the time! Don't forget to add a little oil, S&P and herbs, whatever else you add. Root veg and squashes this time of year are perfect, too.

HTH

Dear all,

A terminological point, and a query:

1. I was a little confused at first with this posting, since 'couscous' seems to be used both for the grain and for the entire dish, including the grain and the root vegetables, lamb, chicken and merguez (in Couscous Royale, at least in Maghrebain cookery here in France).

2. re the grain: is couscous the same as what the French call 'taboul?'?

Phil

taboul? is what I understand to be the salad made from Bulgar wheat, a kind of large cousin of couscous. It tends to be a bit chewier.

The couscous available in the UK (and I seen it in French cardboard packets of) has been cooked already, hence just adding boiling water/stock is all that is needed. However, real couscous, as in North Africa must be cooked several times, my Algerian friend said 3 times, at least the last one was by steaming.

Couscous should be small grain and yellow, whereas Bulgar wheat is larger, and orange/brown.

Thanks for that.

We also have packets of the smaller grain here in France, which we put hot water in. We serve that with the 'couscous' made from chicken stock, that North African spice mix, lamb and chiken thighs, courgette, carrot and 'navets' (small turnips).

The terminology and taxonomy relating to parsnips, turnips and swedes is rather confusing, I find.

Phil

that North African spice is called Ras el Hanout, or 'head of the shop', although I think it is probably 'floor of the shop' in less scrupulous emporia!!

Parsnips are like white carrots, turnips are white with a purple collar and swedes (full name is Swedish turnip) is orange with a little purple top.

I know 'up nawf' they think of swede as white and turnip as orange, but that's 'up Nawf' for ya!!

I find it interesting that I can put the same spices in a tagine as I do in a curry, and yet it turns out totally different, its all in the cooking method, of course.

I think we will have chicken tagine for tea tomorrow, if the Algerian guy is in the market. The secret is not to add water!! All those lovely fresh root veg will be on sale.

I think that Lapis described that North African spice as 'sweepings from the floor', or something like that.

re names for things in the natural world: the discrepancy between scientific names and folk names can be huge. Whether there is any scientific basis for a distinction between parsnips, turnips and swedes, I don't know. I should check it out.

If you look at the octopus vs cuttlefish vs squid distinctions (which I guess has a basis in science), the popular cultural terms are very variable: even the French don't understand, often, that cuttlefish isn't squid. I think that this is because they see them on a plate, cut into rings, rather than seeing the creature itself.

To make things more complicated, the French have more than one word for some of these beasts, and the words are not all French in origin.

phil

Here is a recipe that I make occasionally. It is vegetarian, but you could also cook it with chicken broth or add meat to it. By the way, I have also stirred a little bit of couscous into soup (usually at the end) and it is quite good that way.

Couscous with Vegetables

4 cups cooked couscous (still warm)

2 broccoli crowns (smallish) broken into florets

1 carrot, grated

1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced

3 Tablespoons oil

1 onion, diced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon of each: cayenne powder, black pepper and cinnamon

salt, as needed

4 oz. canned chickpeas

garnishes of minced fresh cilantro and one tomato (seeds removed and diced)

Steam the broccoli, carrot and yellow bell pepper until just tender. Set aside.

Put the oil in a large nonstick frying pan and cook the onion over medium heat until brown and tender. Stir in the spices and the canned chickpeas and stir to blend. Mix in the steamed vegetables. Carefully stir in the couscous. Add salt to taste. Garnish with the fresh cilantro and tomato.

I think the Chinese are far more discerning in the differences between sea creatures, as in octopus/squid/cuttlefish; and sea hares/sea slugs etc.

Perhaps it is from pointing out what you want to eat from aquariums in restaurants - although is not necessarily likely that what you choose is what you get!

Winton

confusion reigns when it comes to prawns, or shrimp. Most people, when I asked them what the difference was, said that shrimp were small prawns.

Not so. They are different animals. There are many genera (and species) of prawn and shrimp that humans eat, in the UK we call them prawns, or shrimp, as appropriate. But in America, they are all known as shrimp.

The main difference is the number of claws, and the overlapping of the third body plate. And prawns tend to grow larger, though that depends on the exact species. They are usually sold with a number, that number being the average number per kilo, so 78 - 90 would be the size that gives between 78 and 90 prawns per kilo. In Manchester, in a Chinese supermarket they had 30 feet of chest freezers just containing prawns, some size 0, ie bigger than a kilo each and as big as a fist!!

I confess to being confused about shellfish. I think that many people fail to look at the kind of detail mentioned, most helpfully, by Lapis. that failure to examine details is understandable, I find.

I'm confused about the distinction between 'langoustines' and other shellfish: I think that the things we once ate, fished straight out of the sea, in North-West Scotland, were langoustines.

I'd check it on Wikipedia, but I have no faith in Wikipedia.

Phil

langoustines (pronounced 'long...' are the same as Dublin Bay prawns, although none come from that region, and scampi (singular scampo) although nearly anything has been sold in the name of scampi, mostly monk fish tails, itself being known as Angler fish.

I have to admit that I always thought it was to do with the size; langoustine being the largest, except lobster, and krill being the smallest. You do learn a lot of new things here. Thank you once again Lapis and guys. Now the question is how long will I remember this!!

Thanks for that, Lapis. So the 'Dublin Bay prawns' I had in Dublin, at a friend's apartment by the bay, were not from Dublin Bay!

I keep trying to remember the French, Spanish and Greek names for squid, cuttlefish and octopus (since we live in France and travel to Spain and Greece), but it's made more difficult by the facts that (a) some of these cratures have more than one name in a given language, even in a single geographical region of a country, (b) some of the names are borrowed from another language, but are not used to refer to the same thing, (c) there are often specific names for the babies of such creatures, and (d) one often fails to find these names in bilingual dictionaries.

I used to have the same problem with names of birds in English and French, before I got a birdbook with the names in several European languages. You can't rely on locals to inform you: I've been told, for instance, that a chardonneret (goldfinch) is a rouge-gorge (robin). And what the Americans call a robin is not a robin red-breast (thus the puzzing, for Brits, lines in a Leonard Cohen song 'Your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs': the robin read-breast doesn't lay blue eggs).

There is, however, a book called, if I recall rightly, 'Mediterranean Seafood Cookery', which lists the names of different fish in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and perhaps Greek. I must try to get a copy.