Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 171

which is expressed by means of a detailed
and extremely varied vocabulary accord-
ing to regions. We confine ourselves here
to a description of the general processes.
Couscous may be prepared at any time,
but it is exclusively the work of women:
some chose out of preference the nights of
Monday and of Friday to take advantage
of the baraka which is attached to them.
The housewife makes an invocation and
she must not see or hear anything that
might constitute a bad omen; on the
contrary, it is the custom to speak in her
company only of saints, of the prosperity
of the land, etc.
To make her couscous, the woman sits
on the ground, places in front of her a
wooden plate called fna, ga, riyya ,
etc. and, to one side, a receptacle contain-
ing lightly salted water and a sack of sem-
olina; in some regions, a little flour is also
used and to the salted water are added a
few drops of nīsān water (rain of early May
preserved in a flask). The housewife takes
a handful of semolina, puts it in the plate,
sprinkles it with salted water applied with
the hand or with a spoon and proceeds to
roll it (verb ftl ) with the flat of her hand,
until small grains are formed with the
size of small buckshot. When the stock of
semolina provided is exhausted, the grains
are passed through a sieve, and the bigger
ones are rolled again until they acquire
the desired dimensions or set aside to
make a coarse couscous called mamma,
brkūk s , brkuke, mardūd , etc. The grains
are then cooked in steam and may be
kept for some time.
When they are to be eaten, the house-
wife cooks them for a second time. In
a cooking-pot ( dra ), she boils water to
which she adds vegetables (chick-peas,
turnips, wild teasels, etc.) and/or mutton
or beef sometimes browned in a little oil;
she puts the couscous grains in a special
receptacle ( kskās ), a conical vessel made

of earthenware or plaited alfalfa, the per-
forated, smaller base of which is placed
over the cooking-pot and sealed by means
of a twist of straw. Escaping, the steam
passes through the holes and cooks the
couscous. The housewife takes care that
no curds are formed, and when the grain
is cooked, she tips it into a bowl, garnishes
it with a little butter and covers it with
gravy. The vegetables and the meat are
most often laid out on the grain. The din-
ers make pellets with their thumb, index
and second fingers, and flick them dexter-
ously into their mouths.
In the preparation of couscous with
sugar ( sffa, msfūf ), the cooking-pot con-
tains only water; once cooked, the grains,
which are generally finer, are garnished
with rather more butter, and the cone
which they form in the dish is decorated
with ground sugar and cinnamon.
Among the other varieties, we men-
tion brbū , with fine grain, eaten cold,
without butter, and moistened with a little
milk; barbūa , made with barley semolina;
this is called īkūk in Morocco. The Kitāb
al-abī gives the recipe of fityānī which
is prepared by cooking grain in gravy and
which is sprinkled with cinnamon; it also
mentions couscous with chicken.
Couscous is quite widely known at the
present time, especially in France where
it is found commercially produced in food
factories and sold “pre-cooked”; conical
utensils (“couscoussiers”) made of metal
are also produced. Restaurants serve sev-
eral varieties of this Maribī dish accom-
panied by a sauce strongly seasoned with
pepper ( marga ārra; harīsa ).

(A. Cour [Ch. Pellat])