Veal couscous, wild vegetables, courgettes, potatoes and mushrooms

There was no wedding or banquet between the 60s and 70s that didn't have tomatoes stuffed with cùscusu on the menu, and someone had already tried Cùscusu arancini and timbales, I stuffed squid with Cùscusu and in Favignana, shortly thereafter, a chef presented, obviously with very little success, octopus heads stuffed with Cùscusu. And thank goodness that we were finally starting to experiment, perhaps through trial and error, and to "think" Cùscusu in a different way. Now we can even laugh about it, but about fifty years ago this dish, Cuscusu, one of the cornerstones of Trapani's gastronomic culture, was about to disappear, forgotten, still memorized only as a dish for special occasions. But for how much longer?

The time was over when all, and I mean literally all Trapani women knew how to spoon Cuscusu, when Trapani girls began to spoon while standing on a chair, next to their mother or grandmother, imitating their gestures and "playing" spooning in any small salad bowl. Indeed, in some families, little girls learned to nestle in miniature mafarardes, the ones we use today as bowls for chips. If you didn't know how to make a decent Cùscusu, why could you get married?

But despite, or perhaps precisely because of, this widespread diffusion, Cùscusu had never entered the menu of the few trattorias open in the city. Almost all the trattorias displayed the "Venerdì Cùscusu" sign, underlining, without absolutely realizing it, the penitential character that the Cùscusu had at the time: anything other than a festive dish! Cùscusu was a poor and familiar dish, a "convenient" dish to take to work, and it couldn't be otherwise since it was born as a nomadic dish, then handed down from generation to generation by Trapani women for more than a thousand years!

The culture of Cuscusu had become so rooted in us Trapani over the centuries that it was normal to distinguish three types of incocciate: the fine one for fish Cùscusu, the medium one for vegetable ones and the coarse one for meat Cùscusu. And our ancestors didn't go by eye, they used oval aluminum sieves, and the undersigned returned to the mafararda to be harassed again. It is useless to underline the disputes, like a football derby, about the best tackles, rather than the best appetizer. Can something passed down for more than a thousand years risk disappearing? It seems impossible and yet yes, the Trapanese Cùscusu, I emphasize Trapani because the Cùscusu has been cooked for more than a thousand years exclusively along the coastal strip that goes from San Vito lo Capo to Mazara and which has Trapani as its epicentre, was disappearing.

It's all the fault of 1968. Don't laugh, 1968 or rather 1969 and the wave of youthful rebellion that animated those legendary years finally pushed Sicilian girls out of the house too, and not just literally. Sicilian girls were beginning to rebel against the short leash that kept them tied to their family, and together with the bras they also threw traditional cuisine into the bonfires. And it was worse than if they had completely forgotten the kitchen at home: they wanted to change it! They wanted to make new Cùscusu, unleashing family scandals that were rivaled only by disputes over the length or shortness of skirts!

But, while Cùscusu everywhere was sadly on the way to becoming a festive dish, rich but dull, replacing the now scarce attendance with an excessive, distorting embellishment made of sea bream, sea bream, prawns and lobsters, like the interpreters of a dormant passion who are now rarely seen, more out of courtesy than out of true desire and who show off while before they loved each other, the real Cùscusu continued to explode, night after night, in a small tavern in the neighborhood of fishermen, in a wooden shack, where a family of Trapani natives born in Tunisia sold Cùscusu and beer. What the Giudice family prepared and served in that tavern was true Cùscusu from Trapani and at the same time it wasn't, it was different. Or rather, the greed with which Aunt Ninetta had paired it was different: it wasn't filtered like all the women of Trapani did, it was passed through a vegetable mill. In the manner of the women of Midì, when they prepare a Bouillabaisse. When we say a circle that closes. This is one of the many stories that feature Cùscusu, born more than a thousand years ago from the North African Cous cous, the food par excellence.

This meat and vegetable Cùscusu is not traditional, it is my invention, a dish that I have been cooking for about thirty years. In my restaurants I have always had different Cùscusu on the menu, both meat, vegetable or fish, and to avoid going crazy I have adopted a system: I distinguish the broths with which I drink them from the broths with which I season them when sending them to the table. I use a bone broth for the meat Cùscusu, a vegetable broth for the vegetable Cùscusu and a Trapani-style fish broth for all the seafood Cùscusu. Cùscusu served with fish broth can be served with a bowl of scampi, or seafood, or with a scorpion fish boiled in the bowl with which I served it. In the same way, I combine the Cùscusu with bone broth, then I season it with a green lamb fat or a veal fat with vegetables and mushrooms, etc.

I take it for granted that you know how to cook Cùscusu, and I'll go straight to telling you about the delicious dish that will accompany it. I remind you that 50 grams of oil will be enough to cook half a kilo of semolina. As meat I used the muscle, the cut of veal that I prefer, together with the cheeks, to cook the aggravato: long cooking, between two and three hours, but not frayed. In a non-stick pan with two handles I put ten grams of oil, half a kilo of muscle cut into pieces, and two large white onions sliced ​​very thin. Over a very low heat and a covered pan, I waited for the meat juices to begin to come out before starting to season and mix the fat: I added two chopped green chili peppers, a sprig of sage, a sprig of rosemary and a few bay leaves. Salt comes next, as I want to taste the flavor of the meat first. It will take at least two hours for the fat to begin to brown, and then I can sprinkle it with old wine. And I started preparing the potatoes: cut into wedges and fried by immersion in extra virgin olive oil. Meanwhile I diced the Cùscusu, frisculiated it, removed the bay leaves, checked the salt and seasoned it with bone broth. Harnessed in a pair of plaids he will rest for an hour and a half. Once I checked the cooking of the meat, I added the potatoes, let them flavor for a minute and then I lengthened the cooking juices with a ladle of bone broth, and turned off the heat. In another pan I sautéed the first Qualeddru of the year in ten grams of extra virgin olive oil with a kilo of sliced ​​field mushrooms, and two roughly sliced ​​green courgettes, then I added them to the fat and let everything flavour.

Now the hour and a half has passed, so I free the mafararda from the harness that kept the Cùscusu very hot, I friscule it with a holed ladle, I pour the fat on top and I bring it to the table. Each guest will take Cùscusu and conza and mix them in their dish. Please don't get caught up in the urge to imitate the professionals by packing and pressing the Cùscusu into cakes, cups, pyramids & Co. The Cùscusu must always be soft, imagine that bricklayers or farmers use the term Cùscusu as a synonym for something soft and light.

Good lunch from Trapani and beyond

Credits: Angelo Benivenga, Facebook®