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Couscous looks like grain, cooks like grain, and tastes like grain, but it is pasta. Traditionally made by peasant women in Morocco, couscous is a semolina pasta that is crumbled into a coarse meal and steamed in a special pot, called a couscoussière, over a stew called couscous. It is a laborious process that requires three separate steamings, but in the end the pasta is puffed and fluffy, and it makes a delicate bed to catch the drippings from the stew.
When you buy a box of couscous, it contains pasta that has already been steamed and dried, so that all you have to do is add boiling water to heat and hydrate it. Now couscous comes in a variety of flavors. Usually the seasoning is in a separate packet so that you can choose to use it or not, but sometimes spices are mixed in with the pasta, in which case the variety will be much less versatile as an ingredient.
Israeli couscous (also known as toasted couscous) has an interesting story behind it. When Moroccan Jews immigrated to Israel, they missed having couscous. An enterprising immigrant attempted to manufacture it, and when the machines tried to duplicate what the couscous makers in Morocco were doing, the pasta came out bigger and rounder, looking more like BBs than grain. Because of its size, Israeli couscous is not instant. It must be cooked briefly in simmering broth, and it must also be toasted to give it a texture; if not, the grains will take on an unpleasant mushy consistency.
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02-What's Your Hurry?
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