Dining in Morocco Text: Maria Isabel Batista Photography: Abdel Nachit

          Morocco is a fascinating place for people who enjoy and appreciate different and attractive dishes. There you can find a great variety of exotic and tasty dishes.
I could talk about lots of them but I chose specially to talk about the Moroccan Couscous, that I have known, tasted and loved!

          It is highly sophisticated and takes a whole day to prepare. The final presentation is of paramount importance and needs a special touch.
The Tunisian and Algerian population also know Couscous as it originated with nomads and farmers who believed that this dish symbolized happiness and abundance. The name Couscous besides representing the dish itself is also the name given to the semolina flour, which is used in the couscous preparation.

          The first cooking book, which referred couscous, was written anonymously in the 13 th century and was called Kitab al-tabikh fi al-maghrid wa'l-Andalus (Moroccan and Andalusia Cusine) . In this book it is stated that Couscous is not an Arabic dish but has come from the Barbarians who conquered the biggest part of the region.
In 1465 Leo Africanus, a famous Arabic navigator was so delighted by the dish that he took the recipe to Asia .

          One of its first appearances in Europe was in Brittany (north of France), when Charles Clairambault, a navy commissioner , in a letter dated 1699, told that the Moroccan Ambassador, box of Allah de Abd Aisha and his group of eighteen had brought their own couscous flour and that it was a delicious dish which was made for Ramadan (the period of fasting for the Muslim). There was an earlier appearance in Provence, where Bouchard de Jean-Jacques, a traveller, wrote in 1630 that he had eaten in Toulon a “sort of dish made of small grains like rice and that it blows up when cooking, it comes from Levant and it is called couscous”.

          Couscous can be served with meat, fish, vegetables and spices. It used to be cooked with sour milk and melted butter to feed the famished traveller. Nowadays, instead of melted butter olive oil is used. It was the traditional food for the poor, best known to the nomad Berbers, and African women were employed as couscous cook. Even today in Morocco , the dada – Saharan (south tribe from Morocco , where the Couscous was also present), has young domestic women for cooking couscous.

          The Tuareg, a Muslim tribe from Saara's Berber, also used to employ black young women to cook couscous. Slaves were also used in Egyptian homes up to the 9th century. In the Spanish Muslim, slaves used to prepare the meals for the aristocrats while their wives used to prepare the meals for poorest.

          The different tribes of Berber from Morocco have different names for couscous. The tribe Abu's Isaffen called it Shekshu while for the Rif ele Sishtu (north of Morocco ) was called Halima. In Algeria , couscous is called Kisksu or Ta'am, which means “the food” or “the feast” , showing that couscous as an important part of a daily meal.

          In Tunisia couscous is called kiskisi, kisskiss, kuskusi, or kusksi. The biggest grains of couscous are called muhammas or burkukis, while the better grains used for making sweet dishes are called Masfuf.

          The Moroccan couscous is cooked in a special casserole called settle (couscous maker). It is divided in two parts: the first one is where you prepare the vegetables and the meat and on the top (second part) is where you steam the semolina.

          Now we are going to talk about a very important point: how to serve couscous. There is a great range of special Moroccan china to serve and present this wonderful dish.

          When the cooking process is finished couscous has to be arranged with care and dedication. First the women must separate all the vegetables. After that they remove the meat from the sauce in which it was cooked and keep the sauce aside to finalize the preparation. That is when the main preparation starts. The semolina is placed at the bottom of the china, after it is decorated with the vegetables mixing all the colours (sweet potato, pumpkins, vegetables, chicken peas, cabbage and courgettes) to highlight the beauty and the taste of the dish. Finally, the meat is placed and the sauce poured on the top.

          Usually the dish is huge as all the family is invited to eat together, and the most interesting thing is, they eat using their hands.

          Another interesting thing is that, at the end of each meal it is almost compulsory that a digestive drink such as mint tea is served to finish the meal in a relaxed way.

          After this delicious journey of the story of the couscous, you could try to find a good Moroccan restaurant and appreciate this dish or if you want to try to prepare your own couscous you can visit the web page www2.uol.com.br/gula/roteiro_gastronomico and for sure you will find that the Moroccan Kitchen is the key for a healthy life. Enjoy!