Couscous

History

Couscous originates in the Berber (Amazigh) Maghreb, where steaming vessels resembling couscoussiers appear in the archaeological record from ancient Numidia through ninth-century Tiaret and twelfth-century Morocco, with its earliest written recipes surviving in thirteenth-century Arabic cookbooks. The dish reached Sicily under Arab and Berber rule and took root at Trapani, where a fish version is still made. On the Tuscan coast it followed a different route: North African Jewish families carried couscous to Livorno and Tuscany, and cities such as Rome, Florence and Siena long regarded it — like the artichoke — as a distinctly 'Jewish dish' that entered the wider Italian table only slowly. Livorno had drawn Sephardic and, later, Maghrebi Jews since the 1590s, when the Medici Livornina charters offered refuge and trading privileges. North African Jews are credited with first bringing couscous to Italy. Artusi's 1891 Cuscussu is an unusual outsider's record of this Livornese semolina couscous: his headnote states that two Jewish men showed him how to roll and steam it, a method he then reproduced himself. His preparation — veal broth, an herb-and-vegetable sauce, and small meatballs — stands among the earliest Italian print codifications of the dish, distinct both from the Sicilian fish couscous and from the older Maghrebi forms whose long history it only partly preserves.

Ingredients

• g veal breast, point cut
• g lean boneless veal
• g coarse-grain semolina
• chicken liver
• hard-boiled egg
• egg yolk
• assorted vegetables
• olive oil
• bread crumb
• salt
• pepper

Instructions

1. Season the semolina with salt and pepper in a wide shallow dish; sprinkle on water a few drops at a time, grinding with the palm to make it swell loose and full.
2. Work in a spoonful of oil little by little the same way, taking over half an hour; put the semolina in a bowl, cover with a cloth and tie tight underneath.
3. Boil the veal breast in three litres of water for broth; after skimming, seal the prepared bowl over the pot mouth so it steams above the broth without losing steam.
4. Steam the semolina an hour and a quarter, opening once midway to stir and re-covering.
5. Chop the lean veal, mix with soaked bread crumb, season, form hazelnut-sized meatballs and fry in oil.
6. Sweat the chopped onion in oil, add the other vegetables, season and let them release their water; moisten with meat juice or broth and tomato and finish with the diced chicken liver and the meatballs.
7. Off the boil, stir the egg yolk into the semolina; add part of the sauce, mound onto a platter and garnish with wedges of hard-boiled egg.
8. Stir the rest of the sauce into the broth and serve it in individual cups alongside the semolina; serve the veal breast afterward as boiled meat.