main courses: March 2009 Archives

One of Morocco’s most celebrated dishes is ‘couscous aux sept légumes’.  Seven is a lucky number in Morocco, and each region and city has its own variant version of this wonderful dish.  Some say it should be made with not only seven different vegetables, but also seven spices and seven-year-old aged butter, called ‘smen’, for maximum good fortune.  By these standards this recipe is pretty charmed.  (I’m counting the chickpeas and the chillies.)

Having greatly enjoyed eating and helping make this dish several times during our time in Morocco, I couldn’t wait to try it at home.  Normally, you’d expect to see fresh tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and the like, but I couldn’t wait for summer.  So here is my winter version, employing all the usual suspect British root vegetables from our organic box.  We’re lucky enough to have a small pot of delicious homemade smen given to us by a kind woman we encountered in the mountains near Taliouine (of saffron fame).  It smells like blue cheese and adds a unique rich savoury note to the couscous.  If you don’t happen to have any aged butter, use regular butter or Indian ghee instead.  If you like, you can mash blue cheese into some butter to mimic the smen flavour.

I’ve simplified the recipe by using tinned chickpeas, quick-cook couscous and water or stock.  For the real deal, you should really cook the chickpeas from scratch (soaking them in advance and then peeling them), roll and steam your own couscous (steaming it three times over the simmering vegetables), and use a hunk or two of meat to make the broth.  It is also sometimes served with a delicious sweet relish of caramelised onions and raisins.  But this simple way works just fine, and there’s no need for any meat.  The vegetables come out most delicately tender and exquisitely flavoured; you may be surprised how delicious turnip and swede can be.

For a traditional Moroccan banquet such magnificent couscous dishes would be served following the meat course and before the desserts.  But they are really meals in themselves.  To eat, people cluster around the giant communal dish, usually sitting on cushions or benches around a low table, and eat with their hands.  As we found, the knack of shaking handfuls of couscous into neat balls and then popping them into your mouth, using just your right hand and without smearing food all over your face, is one that requires considerable dexterity.  After embarrassing ourselves on numerous occasions, we slowly learnt that it’s all in the wrist action, and the use of the soft, moist vegetables as glue to bind the couscous.  This is great party food!

I firmly believe that old classics are old classics for a reason - they’re utterly delicious - and therefore should not be overlooked on the assumption they’re either too boring or too fussy and antiquated.  Boeuf bourguignon is the perfect example; you just can’t beat slow cooked beef with the simple additional flavours of red wine, bacon, onions and mushrooms.  For maximum flavour, make this a day in advance.

While staying in Paris at the start of our culinary travels in 2008, I took a class with chef Eric Fraudeau.  On my request, and despite having made them all many times before, we cooked boeuf bourguignon, gratin dauphinois and tarte Tatin.  It’s always fascinating to see how different people approach the classic dishes; there’s always more than one way.  Sometimes they turn out equally delicious but for different reasons; other times you come to realise there’s a reason behind the original recipe.  (That’s assuming you can put your finger on an ‘original’ recipe; such dishes are usually highly contested.)  Boeuf bourguignon is traditionally served with boiled potatoes, but if you’re up for a really rich meal, the gratin dauphinois works a treat.

Eric’s bourguignon was pretty standard, with all the usual suspects for ingredients.  I have only made some slight alterations for the recipe here.  Eric recommends beef cheek - it will cook down to the most unctuous, tender and tasty mouthfuls you can imagine.  However, I was disappointed to find that I cannot get beef cheeks where I live.  In Paris it was easy - Eric took us to a series of wonderful butchers selling all kinds of things, including horse.  In England, my local butcher tells me, EU laws are applied more strictly and due to the additional regulations surrounding carcass heads (think BSE and the rest ...) there are more steps and inspections in the process.  The result is that what should be one of the cheapest cuts becomes too expensive for most butchers to bother with.  

In place of cheek, my butcher recommends chuck steak, which is from the shoulder.  If not that, then any good stewing cut - such as rump, round or shin - would do.  For the wine, the only book I have that actually recommends using a Burgundy is the little ‘recettes bourguignonnes’ cookbook I found in Beaune.  Everyone else recommends something fuller bodied, such as a Côtes du Rhône.  Finally, I can’t tell you what a difference good bacon makes.  Try to avoid those packets of pre-cut ‘lardons’ in supermarkets; they’re full of water and taste of little.  Instead, see if your local butcher sells bacon bits leftover from his own slicing.