How I ended up making couscousi in Naima’s kitchen is crazy, but so was life in Tunisia. My Austrian roommate Andreas, working as a soldier-extra on a Roman movie filmed in Carthage, met a loony Tunisian named Dali, whose mother Naima did industrial embroidery for big name Italian fashion designers (or maybe rip-offs) in a studio attached to their house in Soussa. Andreas, whose attempt at managing a café in Tunis had just buckled, decided to develop a line of windsurfing clothing instead. Naima would help him network in the textile industry. Andreas spoke English well, and some Arabic, but no French. I was therefore along for moral support and French-English translation. Naima adored Andreas, but when I showed interest in Tunisian cuisine, he was all but forgotten.
We were to prepare couscousi (couscous), the most typical of Tunisian dishes. Couscousi refers both to the granular pasta and the traditional dish that integrates it with vegetables and meat or fish cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. We had a gas burner, a couscous pot, and two giant headless fish. Couscous pots are aluminum and bulbous. This one was two feet tall and topped with a six-inch tall aluminum couscous steamer, the principle being that steam rising from the sauce in the pot cooks the couscous.
We began with the steamer set aside and an inch of oil in the pot. Naima seized the first of a dozen long, shiny, dark green peppers. “Cut them like this,” she said, slitting the pepper lengthwise and dropping a pinch of salt inside. Eleven peppers later, she reached in gingerly to turn them as the skin blistered. When they softened she fished them out, dodging splattering grease.
Into the oil flew fistfuls of onions I’d sliced with teary eyes. She laughed at me, and the kitchen filled with the lovely aroma of frying onions. When the onions softened it was time to add tomato paste mixed with water, a ubiquitous ingredient in Tunisian cooking that must be handled carefully lest it overpower. She added chopped ripe tomatoes and a spoonful of powdery red pepper.
Our attention turned to making the couscousi moist and fluffy and ready to be steamed, hopefully avoiding the creation of a cohesive one-kilo mass of starch. “You,” said Naima, eying me pitiably, “will need to add a bit of olive oil so it won’t stick to itself. We begin very young learning to do this.” She sprinkled salted water over the top of the couscous. “With the hand like a fork,” she said, raking her fingers through the couscous over and over, “until the couscousi makes dough when one does this,” she squished a few grains together and they stuck. The couscous steamer settled into its place above the pot.
Into the pot went an outrageous quantity of chopped potatoes and fat chunks of orange squash. Finally Naima tackled the two slick and shiny headless fish that had been waiting in the sink. She wielded the serrated steak knife, her only weapon, and started scraping. The shimmering scales turned to gray sludge and dripped into the sink. I had never seen a fish cleaned, and her blunt instrument gave the process a kind of brutality that made me want to keep Naima on my side in a fight. After stripping the scales she attacked the dorsal fin, sawing until it relented and broke off. She then slit the belly and pulled out the purple and red guts.
“When will you return to the United States?” she asked me.
“In two weeks.” She looked up and her eyes flashed betrayal. She was hoping for a friend.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” She sawed away at the fish with furrowed brow, cutting narrow steaks from the head end, and wider pieces near the tail. She scaled the second fish and removed its fins. “Give me your phone number in the United States,” she said finally. “You must call me when you make couscousi for your friends.” She smiled as she gathered the innards and dropped them in the corner for the cat.
Naima coated the fish steaks with crushed garlic, salt, cumin and coriander, then found an old mayonnaise jar in the cupboard and started filling it with the red pepper used in the sauce. “Take this back with you,” she told me, “I dry the peppers and take them to the spice grinder. He brings them back to me like this, like powder.”
“But you have almost none left,” I protested.
“Every year I dry new peppers so it will stay fresh. Please, take it.” She added several pieces of fish to the sauce, and when the squash and potatoes were cooked she pulled them out. When the couscous was done she poured it into the serving dish and the sauce followed; it was brimming. As the fish fried on the burner, she integrated the sauce into the couscous until together they glowed orange. She flipped the fish steaks and arranged the squash, potatoes, and green peppers on top of the couscous. When the fish was done she added it to the display. “Taste a bit,” she said, and disappeared. I extracted a sauce-soaked piece of fish and slipped it into my mouth. I closed my eyes and felt the tomato, the warm red pepper, the musty cumin and coriander, and the mild white fish. It was all of Tunisia in one bite. Suddenly Naima was in the doorway chuckling. I cast about for the right compliment, but she didn’t need it. She had a necklace in her hand, painted with the symbol of protection from the evil eye: blue, white, and black. “Take this,” she said, “my daughter never wears it.”
“Shukran, merci, and thank you,” I said, and the corners of her eyes crinkled before she turned away saying, “Bon, I suppose you should call the boys.”
