Recettes

Couscous Royale

Couscous royale is a plate of fluffy couscous piled with grilled meats and a saffron-scented chickpea and vegetable stew, and it is celebration food. Meatball skewers, lamb chops, chicken skewers and merguez sausage all appear on the same plate, which is what the royale in the name is describing. Couscous itself is Amazigh in origin. It is a staple across Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya, and it is Tunisia's official national dish. The food historian Charles Perry places its origin among the Berbers of Algeria and Morocco somewhere between the end of the 11th-century Zirid dynasty and the rise of the 13th-century Almohad Caliphate. The precise origin is not known, and since couscous is made from ground wheat it is unlikely to predate about 6000 BC. The word names both the semolina grain and the dish built around it. Traditionally the grain is steamed in a couscoussier, a two-tier pot with a steamer sitting above the broth, and it is removed, rolled between the hands to separate the grains, and returned to the steamer four or five times. Pre-steamed couscous has made that unnecessary for everyday cooking. Couscous royale is not everyday cooking: it takes roughly two hours of preparation before the chickpeas are even accounted for.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

5 hrHardTunisia

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Lamb chops with chermoula and yellow rice is Moroccan, grilled or roasted lamb served with a fresh herb sauce and turmeric-stained rice. Chermoula is the part worth knowing. It is a North African sauce and marinade built on fresh coriander and parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon and oil, and its name comes from the Arabic chermel, meaning to rub or to marinate. That etymology describes exactly how it is used: rubbed into meat or fish before cooking, and often served again alongside as a sauce. It is most associated with fish, where it is close to standard across Morocco and Algeria, but it works with lamb particularly well, the herbs and lemon cut through fat in a way that a heavier sauce would not. Lamb runs through Moroccan cooking at every level, from long slow tagines to chops straight off a grill, and this is at the fast end of that range. The rice is coloured and lightly perfumed with turmeric rather than saffron, which is the everyday choice, visually similar, entirely different in flavour and cost.

25 minMediumMorocco

Recette de FoodChef · Africook