High in Algeria’s mountains, a Kingdom of Couscous

[Al-khiyal]

A woman sifts semolina flour at the Maison Lahlou couscous factory in Kabylia, Algeria

FRIKAT, Algeria - - HERE in this little village, high in the Atlas Mountains, with a distant hint of the sea, is the seat of the couscous royalty: La Maison Lahlou.

It’s a modest realm, a three-story, unpainted concrete building that serves both as the Lahlou family’s home and as a processing center for its hand-rolled couscous, which won top honors in the eighth annual international couscous competition in the Sicilian fishing village of San Vito lo Capo last year.

The Lahlous are doing their best to slow the spread of commercially made couscous, the fluffy, pasta-like staple of North Africa, by packaging handmade couscous for food stores across Algeria, and someday, they hope, in Europe and North America as well.

“It’s softer than machine-made couscous,” Hakim Lahlou said, “but even if you boil it in water, it doesn’t stick together like machine-made couscous does.”

For the Lahlou family, couscous is more than a meal. It’s a symbol of pride in their Amazigh identity. The Amazigh people lived in the region for about 9,000 years before Arabs brought their religion, Islam, to the area. They are proud and slow to submit to authority. The word Amazigh means “free men.” The wider world knows them as Berbers, an Arab word adapted from the Latin “barbari,” or barbarians, what the Romans called the people on the fringes of their empire.

One cultural trait that sets Berbers apart is their devotion to couscous. Every Friday, from Libya to Morocco and in immigrant communities in Europe and North America, families gather around fluffy mounds of couscous for the equivalent of that fading American tradition, Sunday dinner.

It’s obligatory at weddings and funerals. “We eat it in joy and pain,” Mr. Lahlou said.

Couscous developed in the Middle Ages, along with pasta and bulgur, after people learned to use durum wheat that is too hard to use as bread flour, said the food historian Clifford A. Wright. The first known “couscoussières,” steaming pots with perforated bottoms used to make couscous, date to the Middle Ages. But Mr. Wright said steaming grain over broth in a special pot might have started earlier in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Arabs helped spread the dish to Europe and across the Middle East, but as a dietary staple it is largely a Berber tradition.

At the Lahlous’ small production plant, a warehouse-like room in their concrete family home, local women begin with coarse semolina flour, made from durum wheat, which blankets the hills of Kabylia. The women sprinkle salted water over the flour, which has the consistency of very fine sand, in a shallow terra cotta bowl. As they rake through it in a circular motion with their fingers, finer particles of flour adhere to coarser bits, forming grains of couscous. (Some Berbers say the word couscous refers to the sound of this winnowing.)

After a few seconds the women stop and shake their couscous through a tambourine-like sieve. The originals were made with woven strings of goat hide, though they are wire sieves today. They repeat the process three times, until the tiny couscous grains have reached the desired size. Some people sprinkle a bit of olive oil over the forming couscous, but Mr. Lahlou said that’s not practical for packaged couscous that is meant to have a shelf life of over a year.

In fact, it was the ability to store couscous for long periods of time that made it a staple, along with dried figs and olive oil, for camel caravans crossing North Africa or the Sahara. Even today, families in the Berber countryside often roll enough couscous to last the family a year at a time.

Once the couscous is formed, it is poured onto a sheet to dry and then steamed in batches in a large steel colander. It is passed through sieves again before being spread out again on sheets to dry.

As the women worked one recent afternoon, sparrows flitted in an open window to peck at the pale yellow blankets of couscous grains. The women comb through the drying couscous with a wooden rake as it dries, giving an effect similar to that of a Japanese sand garden.


A wooden rake makes a Zen garden of the drying couscous.

The Maison Lahlou has a network of about 300 women rolling couscous at their homes in the village and surrounding countryside, in addition to those who come to roll at the three-story concrete Maison Lahlou. The Lahlou family delivers the flour and picks up the couscous. The family packages about 50 tons of couscous a month.

The Lahlou couscous is sold in one-kilogram bags for about a dollar each. Their couscous beat couscous made by Tunisians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Israelis, Senegalese and people from the Ivory Coast to win the couscous gold medal at the annual couscous festival in Sicily last September. They will defend their title at the festival that runs until Sunday.

At the family’s restaurant in Algiers, couscous is served in earthenware bowls with traditional long-handled wooden spoons. Once, families would sit around a communal bowl, each dipping in a spoon.

The wood and earthenware softens the edges of the meal. Sid Ali Lahlou, Hakim’s older brother and a couscous connoisseur if ever there was one, insists that wood adds richness to the flavor that would be tainted by the taste of metal cutlery.

Most families own a couscoussière. The base is used to make the soupy sauce while the top pot with the perforated bottom is filled with couscous and steamed for about 20 minutes. After lumps are broken up, the couscous may be steamed a second or even third time to make it fluffy as a cloud.

The Berbers of Algeria usually cook it with a thin lamb or chicken stew in a soup of carrots, squash, potatoes, chickpeas, garlic and tomatoes. Sometimes they eat it with curdled milk or even sugar and cinnamon.

In Tunisia, it’s mixed with fresh butter, mutton, saffron and chickpeas, sprinkled with hot milk, and garnished with raisins, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts and walnuts.

While most couscous is made with semolina, there are also varieties made with rye, barley or even corn. The Lahlous still make acorn flour couscous, “which our parents ate when they were poor,” Hakim Lahlou said. The family has also developed a rice couscous for people on nongluten diets.

“My daughter doesn’t know how to roll couscous,” said Djamel Zerouka, who was sharing a bowl of couscous with Hakim Lahlou on a table covered with red, brown and yellow striped fabric, typical of Kabylia. His daughter, wearing a white silk headscarf, smiled with embarrassed acknowledgment.

“In the big cities, it’s lost,” Mr. Lahlou said. But in Kabylia, all women are raised to roll couscous, he said, adding, “It’s shameful to buy it in the stores.”

High in Algeria’s mountains, a Kingdom of Couscous

[sania]

That is a long story of cuscus making, Al K.

But still I am not able to figure out how the final product looks.

Can you post some fine pics of the final product, both cooked as well as un-cooked?

Pl tell me what is the size (dia in mm), color, shape, density (gm/cc), bulk density (kg/cum) of un-cooked & cooked cuscus.

What is the final steaming time?

[Nectar77]

It's a not a chemistry lesson Sania

[Al-khiyal]

That is a long story of cuscus making, Al K.

But still I am not able to figure out how the final product looks.

Can you post some fine pics of the final product, both cooked as well as un-cooked?

Pl tell me what is the size (dia in mm), color, shape, density (gm/cc), bulk density (kg/cum) of un-cooked & cooked cuscus.

What is the final steaming time?

هل لديكم الخيال الي مناقشه هذه المساءل بسهوله اكبر مع اللغه العربيه؟

[sania]

Ah..Common Al K, that is not how cuscus looks.

Be a good boy and post some close ups of cuscus, before & after cooking.

I know you can & you will

[HOUDA-K]

It always helps to say, please.

[Mnarvi-DZ]

So Nostalgy in cuisine and music, hmmm!