Sun Dried Couscous

In the mountains and valleys that stretch across North Africa, there’s no guarantee of a good harvest from year to year. That’s nothing new for the Berbers. They’ve been farming olives, wheat, vegetables, and fruits there since before Carthage was founded in 814 BCE. (The name “Berber” actually comes from the Roman name for the people: barbarians. In their own language, Berbers call themselves Amazigh, or Free People.) In a good year a Berber tribe would grow plenty of food to sustain themselves. But even in a good year, the farmers learned to look ahead to the future. What if the next year there’s a drought and the harvest is limited? And what if that happens two years in a row? Or what if, after a year or two of bad harvests, a hungry neighboring tribe invades and pillages their food supplies? Those were all common scenarios for the semi-nomadic Berbers.

The solution was to make the harvest transportable.

Like most people looking to preserve food before the days of refrigeration, the Berbers used what they had on hand: salt, oil, sun. In Tunisia, smack dab in the middle of Berber land, sun drying has always been the most important method of preservation. Drying not only preserves, but it also makes the food weigh less. Should the tribe decide to pack up and move, they could take it with them. The Berbers sun dried everything: tomatoes, stone fruits, peppers. And to preserve wheat, they would sun dry couscous.

The basics of making traditional couscous are pretty simple. You take semolina flour and mix it with a bit of salt and water, rub it together to form tiny balls of dough, and then dry ’em out. Today, though, most couscous is made with big, industrialized machines. The whole process can be completed in a couple of hours from start to finish, including just seven minutes for mixers to form the balls and then a whopping eighteen minutes to dry them in huge rotating ovens.

There are still a few producers out there making couscous the traditional, slow way that the Berbers would have made it.

The best couscous I know of is made by Majid Mahjoub and his company Les Moulins Mahjoub.

Mahjoub couscous is “m’hamsa” (hand-made, in Arabic). Using the Razzag variety of wheat that they grow organically on their own farm, they roll every little ball of couscous by hand, the way it’s been done for millennia. For that reason, this couscous is a little bigger than most, and you may notice that it looks a tad less uniform. That’s a good thing. After the couscous has been shaped, it dries in the sun. That drying doesn’t take minutes or hours—it takes days. All told, a batch of Mahjoub couscous takes about ten days from start to finish.

All that time drying in the sun has a huge impact on flavor.

It’s like the difference between bread that’s allowed to slowly rise and proof for most of a day versus the stuff that’s baked as quickly as possible. The longer drying time allows the couscous to develop deeper, richer flavor. In essence, couscous that’s produced as quickly as possible tastes like flour, while couscous that is made more slowly tastes like bread. The exact same thing happens with the flavor of traditional pastas that are allowed to dry slowly rather than being baked as quickly as possible. Mahjoub couscous is wheaty, toasty, nutty, earthy, with a chewy, firm, toothsome texture. This is no boring grain to be relegated to the corner of the plate and smothered in spices and sauces.

I still remember the first time I tasted Mahjoub couscous. The first bite stopped me in my tracks. I had no idea that couscous could be so delicious. But once I got over the surprise, I went back for more, and more, and more. I still always keep a jar or two in my pantry and cook it at least a couple times a month.

Cooking couscous is as easy as boiling water. Seriously. You bring a pot of water to boil, add the couscous, bring it back to a boil, take the pan off the heat, put a lid on it, and let it sit. After ten minutes, you fluff the couscous with a fork and it’s ready to eat. Majid visits us in Ann Arbor from time to time and he’s cooked up some some outstanding couscous dishes for us. Here are a few of my favorites:

Couscous with tomato sauce and a perfect egg

This is one of the simplest ways I know of to serve couscous, and conveniently, it’s also one of the most delicious. After cooking the couscous—roughly ⅓ cup per person as a side dish, or a bit more as a main dish—stir in a bit of good extra virgin olive oil to keep it from sticking. Dish it onto plates and then on top of the couscous spoon a healthy dollop of your favorite tomato sauce, warmed on the stove. Then top that with an egg. I’m partial to a poached egg with the yolk still soft and oozy, but you could use a fried egg, a diced hard-boiled egg, whatever kind of egg fits your fancy. Sprinkle with salt and a grind of fresh pepper, and serve immediately.

Couscous salad

To serve four to six people, use 1 1/2 cups of couscous. Once it’s cooked through, stir in a couple tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil, then let it cool. While it cools, dice a bunch of vegetables: an onion, two tomatoes, a sweet pepper, a cucumber, a little fresh mint, and a preserved lemon. When the couscous has reached room temperature stir in all the vegetables along with a few capers and a splash of white wine vinegar. Once it’s all mixed up, refrigerate it for half an hour or so to chill it and let the flavors meld. Just before serving taste and add salt if needed.

Sweet couscous

Majid uses three parts milk to one part couscous. Bring the milk to a boil, and add the couscous. Let it simmer for five minutes, then remove it from the heat and let it cool a bit. That’s it—it’s ready to serve. Majid likes to add a bit of jam to it, but he also recommends you could add a little sugar to sweeten it up a bit more. Since hearing about the recipe, I’ve made it with a little maple syrup and cinnamon and that turned out pretty delicious. Majid likes to eat sweet couscous for breakfast. In the summer he likes to make it the night before and keep it in the fridge overnight, then serve it cold, like a couscous version of rice pudding.

Sun drying is the oldest food technology still in use today. (I believe it predates fire, but hey, I could be wrong.) It’s not too common these days, since cheap electricity allows us to dry things much more quickly than the sun does. But sun drying can produce some incredibly flavorful foods including some of our favorites like sun dried tomatoes, couscous, peppers, and salt. And it can do so in an incredibly environmentally friendly way.

The first sun dried foods were a product of necessity.

Removing moisture helps to preserve food, and also made it lighter to carry, two reasons why the nomadic Berber peoples of North Africa started sun drying foods thousands of years ago. By processing wheat into sun-dried couscous they were better able to have a ready food supply, even if they had a year or two of bad crops. The fact that slow sun drying can also produce a lot more flavor must have been a bonus; the sun dried couscous made by the Mahjoub family in Tunisia is toasty, wheaty, and way more flavorful than any other couscous I’ve tried. The sun dried garlic spread that the Mahjoubs make is likewise deeply flavorful. The time it takes for the garlic to dry in the sun concentrates its flavor, enhancing its natural sweetness—the same sort of effect you get from roasting a head of garlic in the oven.

That intensity of flavor is a common theme amongst sun dried foods. Marash pepper from Turkey is a prime example. After being harvested in August, shiny red peppers are laid on white muslin sheets to dry in the sun for a week. The type of pepper used is prized because its thin flesh can dry fairly quickly; thicker peppers end up with a tougher texture. After drying, the stems, seeds, and white interior flesh of the peppers are removed, which reduces the heat level but maintains the flavor. The result is a burgundy pepper flake with a deep, roasted chile flavor that lasts and lasts without ever getting too hot.

This ancient technology is up-to-the-minute environmentally friendly.

The counterintuitive thing about sun dried foods is that, even when they’re shipped to us from the other side of the world, they can be more environmentally friendly than local foods that rely on more energy-intensive methods to create. Take salt, for example. To make salt here in Michigan we have to mine it with heavy machinery (that’s how the Kosher brand salt you see at grocery stores is made—it’s mined just north of Ann Arbor). To make it in foggy coastal places like Wales you have to boil it out of the sea water, which takes a tremendous amount of fossil fuel. But on the sunny Southern coast of Portugal or along France’s Brittany coast, salt can be harvested from shallow pools of sea water that evaporate in the sun. The salt is raked by hand and the only machine you’ll spot is a conveyor that piles it high for storage until it’s shipped to us.

We often think of the world in terms of continents, so Europe and Africa can seem like very different places. But the temperate, sunny lands surrounding the Mediterranean – north, east, and south – have a tremendous amount in common, especially when it comes to food.

Fats

Olives thrive all across the warm, dry Mediterranean climate. Olive oil has been the primary cooking fat in nearly all the lands that border the Mediterranean since at least Roman times, including Tunisia, Greece, and Italy.

Grains

Northern Africa was the “breadbasket” of the Roman empire, providing grain for the “bread and circuses” of the capital. Wheat and barley are the main grains across North Africa. As throughout Europe, breads are a staple across North Africa, including flatbreads like aish baladi in Egypt and taller breads like Khobz el dar in Algeria. In Libya, a steamed bread dish called bazin is a national favorite. Hard semolina wheat – the stuff Italians use to make pasta – is used across North Africa to make couscous. Wheat is also used in sweets throughout the region, like ghoriba cookies or sfenj donuts.

Vegetables

The vegetables in a good French ratatouille, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and zucchini, are all common across North Africa. Tomatoes star in a stew called shakshuka, eaten across the region. Dried chili peppers are the basis of harissa, a spicy sauce that’s especially popular in Tunisia. And just as the Spanish love their marinated carrots, in Egypt, street vendors sell beautiful, pyramidal stacks of purple and orange carrots.

Fruits

Just as in Greece, Italy, and southern Spain, lemons are ubiquitous across North Africa. They’re squeezed over fish, used to tart up dishes like tagines in Morocco and Algeria, and preserved with salt for a sour-salty condiment. Other common fruits include figs and apricots, which are often sun dried.

Herbs

Just as Italy has its basil and Greece has its oregano, Morocco has its mint and Egypt has its hibiscus. Both are commonly steeped to make teas. Chermoula, an herby relish typically made with cilantro, parsley, spices, and a bit of lemon or vinegar, is served alongside fish from Morocco to Libya.