“You need to be in a relaxed mood to make couscous,” says chef Nezha Bouayadi, hair neatly tucked into her black hijab. Arabic R&B music echoes around the walled patio of The Ruined Garden, a restaurant in Fez that champions local Fassi food culture. Like many businesses in the city’s eighth-century medina, this leafy patio restaurant is hard to find, but the successful are rewarded with dishes that rarely make it onto menus —and the chance to see couscous made from scratch every Friday.
Nezha massages grains of semolina through a fine wooden sieve. Then, alternating between fingertips and palms, she instinctively adds splashes of water and flour, rolling the grains around a rough basket until she’s got that couscous texture. Some 20 minutes later, it’s ready to be steamed and plated with saffronflecked roast pumpkin and courgette, then scattered with sticky caramelised raisins and marinated chickpeas. The couscous is as light as air, absorbing all the rich sweet-savoury juices.
Nezha learnt to roll couscous when she was 16, in preparation
