Algerian couscous

Ingredients

• Couscous700 g
• Lamb — on the bone, in pieces1 kg
• Chickpeas — soaked overnight200 g
• Carrots4
• Turnips3
• Courgettes3
• Pumpkin400 g
• Onion2
• Tomato paste2 tbsp
• Ras el hanout1 tbsp
• Butter80 g
• Olive oil80 ml
• Harissa — to serve2 tbsp
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Brown the meat with the onion in the base of the couscoussier, add the tomato paste, spices and chickpeas and cover with water. Cook an hour.

   65 min

2. 2

   Sprinkle the couscous with water and oil and rub it between your hands so the grains separate. Steam it fifteen minutes.

   20 min

3. 3

   Turn the grain into a wide dish, sprinkle again, rake it apart and let it cool five minutes.

   8 min

4. 4

   Return it to the steam for fifteen more minutes. Meanwhile add the carrot and turnip to the broth.

   17 min

5. 5

   Rake it a third time, working in the butter, and steam it a final ten minutes.

   14 min

6. 6

   Add the courgette and pumpkin to the broth for the last twenty minutes; they cook faster than the roots.

   20 min

7. 7

   Mound the couscous, meat and vegetables on top. Serve the broth in a separate bowl and the harissa in a third.

   8 min

About the dish

Couscous is not boiled. It is steamed over the broth in the top of a couscoussier, three times, raked apart by hand with water and oil between each. Instant couscous from a packet is another dish.

The upper basket must not touch the liquid, and the join is sealed with dough or wrapped in cloth: the steam has to pass only through the grain.

The vegetables go in by cooking time: carrot and turnip first, then courgette, pumpkin at the end. All at once turns some to mush and leaves others hard.

Worth knowing

• — The join between the tiers is sealed with a rope of flour-and-water dough. Steam that escapes sideways is grain that stays underdone.
• — The salt goes into the water used for raking, not into the broth below: otherwise the grain stays bland.
• — Without a couscoussier a colander over a pot, its rim wrapped in foil, does the job. The principle is the same; only the escaping steam matters.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

760 kcal

Protein

40 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

88 g

More from Algeria

• Chorba frik — A soup of freekeh, the smoked green wheat, with lamb and mint. The first thing on the table in Ramadan.