The Man Who Ate Everything (44 page)

Spread before us were specialities from the southern regions of the country, from the Mediterranean coast to the edges of the Sahara: a variety of salads and Tunisian breads; stuffed calamari; red pumpkin stewed with chickpeas and onions; a steamed square pasta from the town of Gafsa; a gelatinous meat stew with dried mallow leaves from the city of Gabes; a flat, stuffed semolina pie from the oasis of Tozeur; a vegetable soup from ancient Tataouine; a dish of tomatoes, eggs, and local sausage from somewhere else; and the ubiquitous seafood
brik,
wonderfully thin
malsouka
pastry folded into a triangle around a piece of cooked tuna and a raw egg and deep-fried until it is perfectly crisp. Dessert was fresh dates, still attatched to their branches; pomegranates; a variety of citrus; and
the a la menthe,
a strong, sweet mint tea with pine nuts floating on its surface. Tunisia grows the best and most varied citrus fruits I have tasted
—
Clementines and mandarins, sweet lemons, also called bergamots, and a succession through the seasons of twelve varieties of oranges.

The following days were filled with sight-seeing, sumptuous dinners, and seminars (all with simultaneous translation into Arabic, English, French, and Japanese). On Jerba, Paula and I
searched the souks for an unusual triple-decker couscoussier, a steamer made specially for the famous fish couscous of Jerba; the steamer holds a spicy fish broth on the bottom, fish in the middle, and the grains of couscous on top. Paula thrives on the profusion of the marketplace, but she was afraid we had arrived too late in the morning. Throughout the Mediterranean, the first customer
of the day gets the best bargains; shopkeepers believe that if they lose their first sale, the entire day will go badly. Jessica Harris, one of our fellow travelers and an expert in sub-Saharan Africa, told us that the same holds true in Senegal.

Paula seems to breathe in recipes the way I breathe in air. By the time we had left Jerba for the mainland, her notebook was bursting. On her previous trip to Tunisia, in the city of Sfax, Paula had heard about a meatless couscous dish flavored with fennel greens, onions, and spices. Fennel was out of season then and in season now, and when we arrived in Tunisia, Paula immediately began asking people about it.

Behind my back—I believe that I was engaged in a restorative nap—Paula had somehow managed to interview Aziza Ben Tan-fous, curator at the Sidi Zitouni museum on Jerba, and snagged a terrific recipe for the dish. Tanfous had given us a lecture about the food and agriculture of the Berbers. These were the aboriginal inhabitants who dominated North Africa long before successive migrations and invasions of the Phoenicians (with whom the Jews arrived), Romans and Vandals, Arabs, Turks, and French. The Berbers are said to have invented couscous, originally made from barley instead of the hard wheat that was discovered in Abyssinia or Eritrea many centuries later. How Paula knew that Tanfous had a grandmother who made the perfect version of couscous with fennel greens, I will never understand. But a grandmother she certainly had.

Couscous is, for want of a better description, a form of tiny pasta. When couscous is formed by hand, the artisan places coarse semolina flour on a broad, round tray, adding small amounts of water and fine semolina flour as she slowly rubs the surface of the mixture with her palms in a repeated circular motion. Soon the fine semolina and water begin to collect around the grains of coarse semolina, and little balls of couscous begin to appear. Twenty minutes later, when the process has been completed and nearly all the flour has been formed into couscous, the pellets are sieved to ensure that they are all about the same size, then steamed and dried in the sun and packed away for future use.

To prepare couscous for eating, whether it is hand- or commercially made, you bring water or a spiced broth to a boil in the bottom of a steamer; then you soak the grains of couscous in water and place them into the top of the steamer (which is perforated like a colander and always kept uncovered in Moroccan kitchens and mostly covered in Tunisia). The steam and wetness of the couscous prevent it from falling through the holes in the steamer, and soon the grains swell and become light and digestible. Never cook it in boiling water unless you are following one of those rare recipes (usually requiring a very fine couscous unavailable in the United States) that traditionally call for an alternative to steaming.

Paula insists that to prepare the best and lightest couscous, you must steam it twice. (Her first book, the product of seven years spent in Morocco, is called
Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco;
published in 1973, it is still one of the standard cookbooks on the subject.) After the first steaming, the grains are tipped out onto a platter or into a wide bowl, the l
u
mps are broken up, and cold salted water and sometimes butter or oil are rubbed into the grains as they are raked with the fingers, separated from one another, and fluffed up. Then a second short steaming takes place.

But couscous with fennel greens breaks several of these rules: the grains are steamed only once, and the couscoussier or steamer is covered throughout. The result is delicious and handsome as well, one of the best dishes Paula brought back from our trip to Tunisia.

As we learned in the central market in Tunis, untrimmed fennel has a small bulb attatched to a huge mane of greens; in the United States, you will quickly run out of fennel tops and find dill a handy substitute. And another thing: Tunisians use tomato paste in half their dishes. By sauteing it briefly in oil, they manage to remove its metallic, preserved taste. This is one of Paula’s favorite Tunisian kitchen tricks.

Couscous with Fennel Greens

Aziza Ben Tanfous and Paula Wolfert

1/2 pound fennel greens and dill

1/2 pound parsley

Handful of carrot tops

12 pound mixed scallions and leeks

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup chopped onions

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 tablespoons crushed garlic

2 teaspoons sweet paprika

2 teaspoons salt, or more to taste

2 teaspoons ground coriander seeds

1 teaspoon caraway seeds, finely ground in a spice mill or with a mortar and pestle

2 teaspoons red-pepper flakes

2 cups water

21/2 cups couscous

1 fresh hot green chill, stemmed, seeded, and minced

1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 6 sections

6 garlic cloves, peeled

Wash the greens, dill, parsley, carrot tops, scallions, and leeks under running water and chop roughly. Fill the bottom of a couscous steamer with water, bring to a boil, attach the perforated top, add the chopped greens and vegetables, and steam, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool, uncovered. Squeeze out the excess moisture from the greens and vegetables and set aside.

Over a medium flame, heat the olive oil in a 10- or 12-inch skillet. Saute the onions in the oil for 2 or 3 minutes to soften, then add the tomato paste and cook,
stirring, until the paste glistens. Add the crushed garlic, paprika, salt, ground coriander, ground caraway, and red-pepper flakes. Lower the heat and saute slowly until the mixture is well blended. Add 1 cup of the water, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the heat, and stir in the couscous. Add the steamed greens and vegetables, and mix well. Fold in the green chili, red bell pepper, and whole, peeled garlic cloves. Bring the water in the bottom of the couscous steamer to a boil, attach the perforated top, add the contents of the skillet, and steam, covered, for 30 minutes.

Turn out the couscous onto a large, warm serving dish. Fish out the whole garlic cloves and red bell pepper slices and reserve. Use a long fork to break up lumps in the couscous. Stir in the remaining cup of cool water, taste for salt and pepper, cover with foil, and set in a warm place for 10 minutes before serving.

Decorate the couscous with the red-pepper slices in a star pattern, alternating with the whole garlic cloves. Some Tunisians eat this dish with glasses of buttermilk. Serves 6.

The city of Tunis was an hourly surprise, with its sprawling souks, Ottoman Casbah, public baths, modern hotels, and, on its outskirts, the ancient city of Carthage, founded by Queen Dido in 814
b.c.,
and the Bardo National Museum, with its fine antiquities, including the largest collection of Roman mosaics under one roof. (The art of mosaic may have been invented in Carthage, centuries before the Romans arrived.) Tunisia is the northernmost country of Africa—the city of Tunis is only eighty-five miles from Sicily across a narrow stretch of the Mediterranean, and so it is nearer to Europe than to Algiers, Tripoli, or Cairo. The
Phoenicians brought spices from Asia and the olive tree itself; the Romans brought vineyards and fruit trees; the Andalusians came with refined cooking techniques; and the Turks brought sweet nut desserts and the delicious
brik.
For centuries, Tunisia was the breadbasket of Rome, supplying wheat to feed the two hundred thousand Roman citizens receiving public assistance. Tunisians have been cosmopolites for more than three thousand years.

One day in Tunis, an acquaintance arranged for Paula to meet with a group of women in a modest private house. Paula began the session with a question: Which of you makes the most delicious couscous? All eyes turned to one of the women, famous for her couscous with raisins. As she explained how she went about preparing the dish, the other women would either nod or shake their heads in disagreement. Every so often, Paula asked them how their versions differed. A friendly argument ensued, and then the first woman continued. Paula came away with the rough outlines for three new dishes and many alternative ways of cooking them. The session ended when the man of the house came home. He was wearing his best traditional Friday Sabbath dress, a low fez, and shoes that curled to a point.

When the Oldways group left us in Tunis, we were taken under the wing of Lynn and Salah Hannachi, a generous couple whom Paula had met a few years before on her first trip to Tunisia. Lynn is from a small town in Kansas, and Salah grew up in Jendouba, in Tunisia’s northwest. They met in graduate school in the United States, where both of them earned their doctorates. Lynn teaches American studies, and Salah is a government official; his card reads, “Secretaire d’Etat, aupres du Ministre de la Cooperation Internationale et de 1’Investissement Exterieur.” I think this means that he is a deputy minister.

Lynn and Salah had made detailed plans for nearly all of our waking hours, starting with a long drive across northern Tunisia through undulating farmland, vineyards, and olive groves to the resort town of Tabarka and then on to Jendouba, the Hannachi family seat, where Salah’s mother, Jamila Hannachi, and several
of his brothers still live. At brother Rashid’s house, before we sat down to a lavish midday dinner, Mrs. Hannachi made a scrumptious flat bread filled with green onions and green peppers, garlic, sausage, spices, and sheep’s tail fat (a delicacy in many Arab countries), cooked on a ceramic griddle. I would give you the recipe, but I have not yet come close to duplicating the dough in my own kitchen. If I ever succeed, I will rename the dish.
Khobs bisshham
in Arabic, it means “bread with grease.”

The Hannachi clan let us disrupt their lives for several days. Cousin Faisal showed us around the beautiful Roman houses in the ruins at nearby Bulla Regia, and his wife, Mona, and her mother spent a day preparing the lamb couscous of Beja, full of nuts and dates and very sweet. The food of Beja is famous for its Berber and Moroccan influences.

Salah’s mother gave us her recipe for what she considers her finest dish; she is afraid that her version will be lost after she goes. It is called Chakhchoukha, and it consists of a thin, handmade flat bread baked on a ceramic griddle, three or four layers at a time, then torn into bite-sized pieces and eaten like pasta, surrounded by a sauce of chicken and tomatoes. The dish takes three women at least three hours to prepare.

One day Lynn took us to Les Moulins Mahjoub, an idyllic estate in the countryside an hour or so from Tunis, where olives are grown, harvested, and pressed into oil using the same traditional methods I have seen in Tuscany and in the south of France. It was December, and the picking had begun two days before; the first olives had been brought to the mill and were stored outdoors in two whitewashed cribs. In a few minutes, the year’s pressing would begin.

We stood outside the mill building and chatted in the warm morning sun with Salah Mahjoub, one of three brothers whose family has been producing olive oil since 1492, and on this property since 1899. We watched a farmer leading a sheep to an inner courtyard beyond the mill, and we sipped coffee and snacked on
date pastries that had been baked on a griddle that left a circular ribbed pattern. Mahjoub, who wore a gray business suit, excused himself for a few minutes, and when he returned, we entered the mill building and watched the first olives, green mixed with black, as they were pushed under the huge millstone. A little girl rushed in excitedly, waving what appeared to be a small, white translucent balloon with a pool of dark liquid inside.