The Raw and the Cooked: Rolled Timbuktu Couscous
The Wood-Oven Cook in the Mediterranean Garden
This Rolled Timbuktu Couscous was playful and delicious — with my new 20 spice mix from Timbuktu! Have you ever heard of “long pepper”? African long pepper, not Indian long pepper. My good friend Cisse Boubacar, the owner of Maliymas tours, brought some back a few weeks ago and my cuisine has not been the same since. We had spent an afternoon cooking and eating last week while Susanne was in Oviedo, in the Principality of Asturias of northern Spain, building up a large booth for a trade fair. We feasted and imagined the founding of our spice company with these unusual spices that were receiving outstanding reviews of educated palates as the best of class. Cisse got on the phone to his brother to make sure we also get a shipment of these spices along with the his next shipment of African Trade beads.
“The Raw and the Cooked; the Fresh and the Decayed; the Moistened and the Burned.” — Claude Lévi-Strauss
Susanne had renewed her protest at the large pots of food I’d bake in our wood-fired oven or on the stove top; pots that required lots of little Tupperware bowels to be tucked into the overflowing freezer. So I stopped making the couscous after the churrasco and pork neck was lightly cooked and drizzled with fresh lime juice and over 20 herbs and spices.
I let it set overnight, as we continually poked a fork in to spear out another tasty morsel; I wondered what could be done with this colorful, aromatic spice mixture.
I awakened the next day and went on a Tintin like voyage of discovery! The cabbage was put on to steam, instead of the usual stewing, for rollability; and sprinkled with home made champagne vinegar — just because it was close by and seemed interesting —but what is the affect of vinegar on the steaming of cabbage. The carrots, red onion, nabo (a kind of turnip used by the Moroccans); and celery into the frying pan. Then whole grain rice to boil instead of couscous.
These cabbage leaves were rolled up with the vegetable mix and topped with last years just thawed heirloom tomato sauce; mozzarella; black sesame; fresh garden herbs; strawberries—instead of raisins, prunes, and dried apricots often found in a Moroccan couscous sauce—and cherry tomatoes with black Moroccan olives for a salty contrast. These rolls were lightly baked because we were hungry. An al-diente re-formed couscous. I planned on doing this over again the next day because it was fantastic. If London’s Yotem Ottolenghi can re-work a Spanish Paella, I sure as hell can re-invent a couscous!!
“If we knew what it was we we’re doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
— Albert Einstein
With yesterday gone and a another fresh couscous re-creation promised today, I remembered my first cooking inspiration, Julia Child. I’d love to listen to her quivering voice on KCET broadcast from Los Angeles into the Southern San Joaquin valley during the 1960's. What would Julia do. I recalled a stuffed half-chicken with mushroom, carrot, and celery. Why not the classic touch of a comfortable known taste for this culinary expedition to the great Niger river as it passes Timbuktu. Into the biggest frying pan, I had put chopped onion and green Italian pepper. But what of the color. Not sure if I had any more of last year’s heirloom tomato sauce, I opened up the freezer and pulled out the last bag of sun-dried heirloom tomatoes with a basil leaf sandwiched in between.
I finely sliced a few up and added them to the mixture with fresh thyme, oregano, savory, mint, and sage. In with a dollop of chive butter; a splash of white wine; a few drops of balsamic vinegar just so she wouldn't feel left out and fried it all slowly for 40 minutes.
After baking for 40 minutes at 180c, I added tomatoes, strawberries and grosella berries from the garden. That’s the way we roll in the Alta Cuenca of the Manzanares River — the river that winds its way down from here to Madrid.
