Alcuscuz de maiz (Couscous of corn) in early nineteenth-century Mexico
You know, you read in cookbooks that this or that is the real or the best or the most authentic recipe for a certain dish. Then the more you poke around, the more you realize that there are all kinds of variants on the basic recipe. Indeed I am not sure that is even the right way of describing it.
In the last few weeks, I’ve learned that Algerians might call sprouted grain cous cous, that the English at least gave a nod to a rice couscous, that there are all kinds of variants of size and shape among the couscouses of the former Ottoman Empire (from Susan Ji Young Park on Facebook).
All this sets the context for the second couscous recipe from the Mexican manuscript Libro de cocina de la gesta de Independencia (1817).* And because it’s not widely known, this post is just simply to get it out in the public domain.
It’s basically your standard recipe for nixtamalized maize (that is, maize treated with some kind of alkali prior to grinding it wet for tortillas or tamales). And it throws light on the steaming of the other couscous. Both this and the wheat couscous also have instructions for their further preparation as a full fledged dish for a meal but I will leave those for the next post.
Clean (presumably rub the skins off) an almud (a unit of measure) of nixtamal (maize treated with an alkali), put it in cold water for a night, drain well, and put it in the sun on a palm mat of some kind, grind it, and sieve it through sacking, put it in a pot with a hole in the bottom covered with a network of straws, put this pot over another half filled with boiling water, arrange a top sealed with dough on the upper pot, then cook the alcuscuz, take it out, cool it, give it a half pass on the grindstone (metate), add water and cook it like a very solid atole (gruel) but without draining.
I tried doing this and it’s basically your standard recipe for a tamal, except that instead of making individual steamed dumpling, you steam a whole layer and then break it up by grinding for a half pass on the metate. (A full pass is moving all the grinding material from top to bottom of the grindstone, so this means just moving it far enough to reduce it to a granular texture).
As I worked away, I remembered a meal I had at the home of a friend in Mexico City. His wife brought in a casserole dish with great fanfare. It was filled with layers of crumbled tamales with sauce in between. Although most of the company (overwhelmingly Mexican) did not recognize such a casserole, she proclaimed it a traditional family dish.
So again, it’s a crumbly, grainy texture that is sought.
And then. What is the sauce that goes along with these couscous dishes? More on that soon.
*Bear in mind that I think Jose Luis Curiel, who was the midwife of the publication of this collection, came up with the title.
“The North African chef friend” Charles asked was Farid. :-)
They also make cornmeal couscous in Algeria. I am pretty sure Paula mentioned something about it being made in Morocco too. I’ll tell you what, I have cornmeal in my pantry, so I’ll finally try making cornmeal couscous this evening and get back to you.
Now why is that not a surprise, Susan!? About Farid, I mean.
Couscous identification is a bit of a nightmare. In many areas the various couscous products are not actually called couscous, so then it seems only logical to refer to couscous as a farinaceous product cooked in a kiskis (couscousiere). However, all sorts of things that are not couscous (including some farinaceous products) are steamed in a kiskis.
So maybe couscous is a farinaceous product that is made by granulating meal then steaming in a kiskis. Great, except there are a whole bunch of named food items that can be made either as a technical pasta (made from a dough paste) or they can also be made by granulation of meal. Some large ball type couscous seem to have been made as pasta historically, but are now made by Accretion, but some similar products are now made by machine as a pasta. I have three identical products labelled either as muḥammaṣ, kouskousi or Peperino, depending on where they were produced. In the latter case these small pasta are from Italy, where they can also be called Seme Santo, Tempestina, Grattata, Peperino, Pepe, Fregolina, Peperini di Genova, Vaporino, Piselli, Pisellini, Grandinina soda, Grattini, Primaverine, Scintille. While these are technical pasta, they can be used as the nucleus to produce larger couscous balls by accretion, such as burkūkis.
The final product can be a semi gruel, separate fluffy starch granules, large starch balls of various sizes or a solid cake.
I wonder if the key step is actually steaming, as this is quite a rare cooking technique in the Islamic sphere of influence and Europe?
Adam, thanks for your usual succinct round up. My model of these namings is not one that rounds up everything into a clear in or out category. I tend to think there are names for core techniques and that what is included is fuzzier and fuzzier as you go out from there. And this is multiply compounded when you change language. Names, as I think we have said before, are a snare and a delusion.
I just tried it with fine cornmeal, Albers brand yellow “Harina de Maiz”. I wanted to try it with a common supermarket brand. It was very easy to roll into couscous. I placed a cup or so of cornmeal on a large plate, sprinkled with salt, sprayed some water on it, and stirred with my hands until the cornmeal had a slightly moist “sandy” consistency. (Refer to photos on my Facebook wall).
I found the cornmeal to be grittier than durum semolina flour and very easy to handle for couscous. It also took much longer to steam than freshly rolled semolina couscous. Actually, I still have it steaming on the stove top. The time now is a little over an hour. It should be done within 10 minutes. The texture is still a little bit gritty (or grainy). I can see how cornmeal couscous would benefit from using a coarser grind of cornmeal (I think this would help avoid the grittiness) and a fresher packaged product (more flavor).
Handrolled durum semolina couscous has a creamier and lighter mouthfeel. It’s not grainy at all.
Bulghur couscous is also much lighter and fluffier than bulghur pilaf cooked by the absorption method. I find the same to be true of quinoa couscous. I haven’t tried millet, barley or rice couscous yet.
I suppose you could say that couscous is really a way of steaming grains and presenting them with a soup or stew.
Susan, this is fascinating. But I’m a bit thrown by your term cornmeal and then harina de maize. The recipe I was quoting seemed to be using nixtamilized maize. Is tehe harina de maiz a nixtamalized harina or just corn meal?
Loved the information on the different textures.
Maybe “couscous” should be viewed as a multifunction word:
noun for ingredient or for final dish and verb for method.
I think looking at the word this was would make it a lot more complicated to research and a lot easier to understand.
Definitely a word that covers a whole variety of raw materials, products, and techniques. So how to corral these?
True, but what is the “core technique” in this instance. Cooking by steaming or creating starch granules by accretion? Or a combination of both?
Either one, or the other, or both depending on the trajectory of the tradition, I’d say. Which is all about what definitions are and how we handle them.
Hello
Cous cous is found all over north Africa and in parts of Sicily and southern Spain where the moors brought it from there homeland. In France because of the large Algerian and Moroccan population cous cous is seen on many menus with the classic tagine, the name of the ceramic dish used to make Moroccan style stews. Some peop.le believe that cous cous could be the origins of Italian pasta.
Cous cous is not a single grain that sounds more like tabouleha (sorry about the spelling)
Thanks for that Benedict. It’s always good to find people with like interests.
I’m not so sure about that.
If I steam some rice, is it couscous?
If I steam some rice and call it couscous, does that actually make it couscous?
If I steam rice in a double pot called a “kukus” and call it couscous, is it couscous?
If I steam some rice in a kukus and say the rice cooked in this manner has to be called couscous because North African couscous steamers are called “kiskis”, is the rice in fact couscous?
I would say that the answer to all of these is “No”, and in this case I’m not sure that local tradition equates to core technique.
On the otherhand I would be more open to including many of the pasta based “couscous” in the couscous family, even though the core technique has changed dramatically, for the reason that continuity in development can be established.
All this, Adam, demands a fuller discussion than we have yet had of definitions. I’m going to treat myself to that first thing tomorrow.
rice steamed in a couscoussier is sometimes called couscous, it’s not common, but it’s called that. and there is a new product “gluten” free couscous made from rice flour.
bulghur, cornmeal, barley, malted wheat, quinoa, amaranth, manioc, fonio and millet are all called couscous when steamed and served in a north african (or west african too) style.
Thanks for chiming in on this Farid. So it’s the method above all that seems to be important.
yes, it is the method above all. and couscous is almost always served with a sauce. i sometimes say that berber cooking is a starch in search of a sauce.
a kabylie family even created a new couscous, it’s rolled from rice flour and marketed as ‘gluten free’. algeria is a major grain exporter now and maybe this is why couscous made from grains is becoming less common because these grains are less available. many are obviously gluten free, but with limited availability of these grains, a market for a new couscous product is created.
susan found this paper online about couscous in mali. they make a distinction between grains steamed for couscous and boiled into porridge. you will see the traditional sauces for grains in the paper too. to me this idea is very northwest african.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4IkbVJ3LqA4J:www.worlddiabetesfoundation.org/media%283846,1033%29/Nutritional_management_of_diabetes_in_Africa_BESANCON.pdf+mali+couscous+diabetes&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiryvLQEm_7PboBdV9XHXUM8tpojZhJh27gkZ0XQQd4vWu8QjibYSwzpgZ2AinYmqnVfBOEKTSNySQVOyNO35ZaHP40QlNTkOXRVqZHYfjs1ktUi9RJuyY02OhpypD9vseaVh-t&sig=AHIEtbQ1mQCE00fykhO_IR_2ganXsIZpaA
Not just the method I think, there has to be some sort of continuity in the use of the method, otherwise the term looses focus in definition.
Rice steamed in North Africa in a kiskis is one thing, rice steamed in Malaysia (“Nasi kukus”) is another.
I mentioned this in my blog, but it would be interesting to open it up to a wider audience. In some parts of SE-Asia, steamed food is refered to as “Kukus” (or cucus/cuscus), the steamer as “Kukusan”. Linguistically there doesn’t seam to be a connection with North Africa, and terms exist in languages like Old Javanese (where they mean steam/smoke/mist or the quality of these) so pre-dates Europeans (specifically the Portuguese) in the region.
So while I would be very interested if there was a North African/SE-Asian connection, there is no evidence for it as yet. Two parallel traditions, and false cognates.
So getting back to the original point, I think that “couscous” (and related terms) should be reserved for foods that show continuity of development/history as well as the specific technique.
Steamed corn couscous (cuscuz) is a staple in the diet of northeastern Brazilians, and the only kind of couscous most Brazilians throughout the country immediately identify with the name couscous – but somewhat different from this late-colonial/early-independence Mexican version. Other different recipes (not steamed) are also called cuscuz, particularly the “cuscuz paulista” (not as popular, and not as common as it used to be, but quite tasty).
Some food historians believe that the name was bestowed in colonial times, and it is probably true – it is not even clear if the relatively dry cuscuz was already known to indigenous populations, and it could be, like the xerém or canjiquinha (an adaptation of the Southern Portuguese arab-derived wheat porridge xarém) an European-Brazilian creation based on existing indigenous corn meals used for other ends.
Great blog, btw.
Hello there!
How are you doing? And thank you for your articles.
I am glad to read your article regarding various couscous grains.
As I am interesting in knowing more about corn based couscous, millet based couscous, sorghum based couscous, fonio based couscous, manioc based couscous and rice based couscous.
I hope you will help and guide me towards that.
Thank you so much. God bless.
Sincerely yours
Haj Tafa
Hello Haj Tafa,
Thanks for your interest. I am by no means a cous cous expert. You might try the people connected with this upcoming festival in Pasadena. They really know a lot. http://couscousfestival.com/
pour le couscous de maîs c’est une tradition berbere au maroc il y a le couscous precuit et roulè qui se prepare en une minute ou de la facon traditionel avec le couscousier c ‘est un delice l’avantage il ne gonfle pas l’estomac car il est pauvre en gluten c’est le couscous baddaz nom donne au couscous de maîs le site http://www.baddazsania.com