Cooking with "The food of Morocco" by Paula Wolfert

[FlyingChopstik]

Hey Slb! I love that bean pot. I cook beans in it all the time and I even cooked tangia in it, a Moroccan dish of meat, spices and preserved lemon cooked in the oven on low heat for 7 hrs.

[SLB]

Interesting!  I thought it might be too tall for the oven.  Good to know.  

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I seldom eat couscous.  I cannot abide boiled couscous and being lazy I seldom prepare thrice steamed couscous with milk and all that stuff as per Wolfert (pp 202-203).  However tonight I broke down and did so.

 

It was an okra couscous, the broth being what once was the leftovers of Wolfert's lamb tagine with spinach, lemon, and olives (p 364).

 

Very, very good.  But now, what to do with the excess couscous?

[Darienne]

Can you make some kind of cold salad using couscous?  I have a few salads made with cold cooked quinoa.   I don't like cold rice or pasta salads, but many folks do.  Perhaps couscous can work this way also.

[FlyingChopstik]

You can mix the couscous with some buttermilk and a little sugar. Its called saycouk.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Can you make some kind of cold salad using couscous?  I have a few salads made with cold cooked quinoa.   I don't like cold rice or pasta salads, but many folks do.  Perhaps couscous can work this way also.

 

I was planning to try reheating the couscous but a cold salad might work.

[SLB]

I don't love cold couscous, although I find it satisfying enough if it's allowed to get to room temperature (I assume we're talking about leftovers, here).  That's true with other pasta salads, too.  

 

With grains like quinoa or barley or, my very favorite grain for salads, farro, I actually like to warm everything up a little bit before I eat it.  The grains dry out more quickly than the pastas, and I find dried-out grains really unpleasant.  Honestly, I like all my pasta- or grain-based salads a little warm.

 

I won't go near a cold rice salad (again, I'm talking about leftovers -- I can totally deal with cooled rice that was just-cooked).  In fact, rice-based salads is the one thing that I can't handle as a leftover at all.  I have to fry it.   

[Anna N]

 I am just getting into this book now and I have to say if any book that I have read in the last few years cries out for photographs it is this one!  There are a few photographs but many are of scenes or ingredients and very few are of finished dishes.  I am not by any means laying blame just wishing that the publishers could have found the money to support a lot more photography because the food (and the author) are so deserving of it.  I have the Kindle edition so I find myself flipping back and forth as it were between the book and Google images as I try to imagine certain dishes.