Couscous

Preparing a fine dish of Moroccan couscous used to be a labor of love—steaming, sifting , and fluffing up the little pearl granules made from semolina durum wheat all required quite a lot of time. But now we get a precooked couscous that takes minutes to prepare. It may not have quite the light finish of the old way, but it is a boon to a cook coming home at the end of a day and wanting to put an easy, well-balanced meal together. I remember Claudia Roden, years ago, introducing me to this North African grain product. We were cooking for a dinner party she was giving , working together in her comfortable kitchen, decorated with Middle Eastern tiles, at Wild Hatch, on the edge of Hampstead Heath in London. She had me fluffing the couscous, teaching me all the steps, as we gossiped and got to know each other better. It reminded me of her description—in her first, ground-breaking book, A Book of Middle Eastern Food—of the women in her extended family in Cairo, where she grew up, who would spend afternoons shaping and stuffing tempting mezze pastries and enjoying every moment. I’m afraid we’ve forgotten how cooking together gives that kind of pleasure. But here’s the easy formula for one serving of couscous.