Friday is couscous day.
After the midday prayer, across Morocco, families sit down around one big dish. Why Friday, what is in it, how it is eaten, and how to be at one of those tables.
A Homnna guide. Every family's couscous is her own.
After the midday prayer
Why Friday
Friday is the day of the week's great prayer, at midday, and the family gathers for lunch when it is over. Couscous takes the morning: the grain is steamed over the stew, rubbed apart by hand and steamed again. It is the dish of a day when everybody comes home.
In many families a plate is set aside for a neighbour, or for somebody in need. A couscous is made to be shared.
What is in it
The couscous of seven vegetables is the classic: carrots, turnips, courgettes, pumpkin, cabbage, chickpeas, with lamb, beef or chicken in the middle. The broth comes in a bowl beside it, to pour over as you like.
Some families add tfaya, onions cooked slowly with raisins and cinnamon until they are sweet. And many drink lben with it, buttermilk, cold.
How it is eaten
One dish, in the middle of the table. Everybody eats from the part in front of them, and the meat in the centre is shared out by whoever hosts. Those who grew up with it roll the grain into a ball in the right palm and eat it from the hand.
A guest is usually handed a spoon, and nobody minds. Leave the centre to be shared, and eat from your side.
A couscous is made to be shared.
How to sit at a Friday couscous
- On a Friday, ask for lunch: it is asked from 10:00. Say you would love a couscous; a family who cooks one that day says so in her answer, with her time and her price.
- Or book ahead for a Friday, for the city you will be in. The families there answer with the meal they will cook: choose the one that says couscous.
- A lunch is usually 120 MAD a person, in cash, to the family.
Your place at the table is one question away.
Photographs: Wikimedia Commons (2)
- A couscous with seven vegetables, in Fèsby Beata Gorecka,CC BY-SA 3.0, resized
- One dish of couscous, and the hands of the people sharing itby Cpgeoujda,CC BY-SA 4.0, resized