Category Archives: Middle Eastern

Couscous

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ingredients:

1 cup chick-peas
1 pound carrots
½ pound turnips
1 small celery root
2 onions
1-2 pound chicken
2 pounds mutton neck, boned breast or shoulder, cut into pieces
4 tomatoes
1 sprig thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
1 pinch saffron
2 cups semolina
3 cups salt water
2 cups zucchini
1 Tablespoon oil
1 handful raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon harissa sauce

instructions:

  1. Soak the chick-peas for 24 hours, or use canned chick-peas (garbanzos).
  2. Peel, wash, and cut all the vegetables into large pieces. Chop the onions. Peel, seed, and quarter the tomatoes. Cut the chicken into 8 pieces.
  3. Place the mutton and chicken pieces in the bottom section of a couscous pot. Add the carrots, turnips, celery root, tomatoes, onions, chick-peas, they, bay leaf, cloves and saffron. Cover with water up to ¾ of the height of the couscous pot. Bring to a boil. Simmer continuously while preparing the semolina.
  4. Pour the semolina into a large, deep dish. Sprinkle, little by little, with 1 cup of salt water, mixing well with the hands to separate the grains. When the water has been absorbed, pour the semolina into the top section of the couscous pot. Do not cover. Leave for 30 minutes.
  5. Remove the dish of semolina from the pot. Wash the zucchini and cut into small pieces. Add to the broth in the bottom section. Knew the semolina as before, with the second cup of salt water. Leave for 20 minutes.
  6. Replace the semolina dish on top of the couscous pot and leave it for another 20 minutes. Remove and mix the semolina again with the third glass of salt water. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
  7. Add oil to the semolina and rub the grains between your fingers to grease the grains well. Return to the couscous pot and steam for 10 more minutes.
  8. Serve the semolina separately, mixed, if you like, with a handful of raisins that have been soaked for 2 hours. Serve the meat and vegetables in a large, shallow bowl, and the broth in a soup bowl with the chick-peas.
  9. Prepare a pungent sauce by mixing the harissa with a ladleful of broth.

A vegetable steamer can be used instead of a couscous pot if the holes are small and if the bottom section is deep.

THIS RECIPE SERVES 10 PEOPLE.

©️ Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., Japan, 1971. Published in the United States and Canada by BOBLEY PUBLISHING, a division of Illustrated World Encyclopedia, Inc. Printed in Japan.