(Couscous with Spinach, Pine Nuts and Munster Cheese)

I knew they were going to do it. The Feds are opening a couple hours late, planning on leaving early, and assigning a “liberal unscheduled leave” policy to those who really cannot get out of their subdivisions all across the region.
 
The government is a Grinch, after all, and everyone in authority is feeling a little embarrassed by the humility we had to show the elements.
 
The mass of snow out there on the parking lots and lawns is settling. The melt began almost immediately, though the transformation of hard wet snow into gray-colored concrete is not complete by any means.
 
I slogged into the office in the afternoon, and was productive enough for the time I spent there. It is surreal on the streets, with tunnels cut into the banks to permit entry into parking lots that have ice potholes on top of the asphalt ones.
I could have stopped at the store on the way home, but there was an air of desperation there that you could feel from blocks away, and I still have enough food in the war reserve to get through a few more days. I decided to go with something lighter than pure comfort fare for the evening, and I have to keep my vegetarian skills up since some of my pals have the good sense to eschew the charnel house as a source of nutrition.
 
The key to successful entertaining is flexibility, after all, and there is a lot to be gained from lightening things up.
 
I bet President Clinton feels that way this morning, since his arteries are clogged again, and they had to run one of those devices up his femoral arties in the groin to the left ventricle of his heart.
 
In a few years I am doubtless going to be feeling the same way, unless I change things around. I don’t know how to take all this fierce weather except as a clarion call for change. Jinny brought a recipe with her that fit the bill, from a historical and gastronomic perspective.
 
I remember spinach from Popeye, mostly, and the cans of the stuff that Mom had in the back of the cupboard and emerged only in times of real emergency. I managed to survive most of childhood with only a mild distaste for the soggy green mass that emerged from them, quite unlike the way the dynamic Sailor would squeeze the stuff out.
 
Wilted spinach can be one of the great treats on the plate. It was a revelation the first time I tasted the sweet bacon dressing on real fresh leaves blanched just so; it is a fabulous warm salad first course for all sort of things. Accordingly, the post-attack larder has a few cans of Allen’s Popeye-brand in the back.
 
You can use canned spinach in quiche;
You can blend in a blender and add to soups and stews to stretch the good stuff;
Spinach puree can be used to augment to meatballs and meatloaf
You can drain the liquid and replace with vinegar and it is not that bad.
 
The war reserve is potentially dangerous, and a lot of us have been dipping into it this week. My pal Mac called to say that he had been laid low by something bad that had been growing in his emergency locker, and advised me sternly to rotate the stock on my shelves.
 
I took his counsel on board, and Jinny’s recipe was perfect. Pine nuts never go bad. Olive oil is near eternal. Garlic can be dried or kept chilled for months and months. Her receipe takes the spinach and marries it up with a social-political food that harks back to the last time Islam swept over Spain and knocked at the gates of Vienna.
 
Couscous is one of the staple foods of the Maghreb, or what we call western North Africa. It is made from two different sizes of the husked and crushed (but unground), semolina of hard wheat using water to bind them together. Semolina is the hard part of the grain of hard wheat that resisted the grinding of the primitive medieval millstone.
 
The use of couscous followed the wild expansion of Islam across North Africa and into Spain with the Conquest. It is a staple of Sicilian cuisine, as ancient as the dominant Berber culture of the island in the early Middle Ages.
 
In Rome, they think of it as a Moorish dish. Under the Tuscan sun they think of it as Jewish food, introduced by the Sephardic Jews who arrived in Livorno in the 1500s. In Brittany, the earliest references are in letters from 1699, but other references clearly indicate the French were dining on it in Toulon in 1630.
 
In the modern period, couscous have had a resurgence in popularity with the imperial conquest of Algeria, and the subsequent repatriation of the Pieds Noirs when the rebels threw off French rule in 1962. In France and Spain today, couscous refers to a sort of stew.
 
The keys to preparing an authentic couscous dish are patience and care. I possess neither trait in abundance, and like to take a thoroughly un-Islamic approach to cooking while self-lubricating. Accordingly, there is no way that I could attempt to prepare couscous from “scratch.” Not even the Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians do that, except maybe out of in the hills in a few Taureg villages.
 
The Whole Foods has bulk bins of couscous, which is about as authentic as I could get, but if you are going to use canned spinach, why bother? Boxed couscous never goes bad, and is one of the perfect war reserve staples. Purists will sniff as any product that involves boiling, since they are supposed to be steamed, but what the hell.
 
You are snowed in, or a towering thunderstorm had knocked out the power, or a weapon of mass destruction has been employed. The purists can wait until peace breaks out again.
 
After I got the salt encrusted Bluesmobile back the garage I was ready for something hearty and hot, and that is just the sort of recipe that has always worked for Jinny.
 
I don’t recommend the canned spinach I had to use, but I had to get rid of it, and the food drive season has passed. This recipe calls for fresh, and let’s just imagine that it is.
 
Couscous with Spinach and Pine Nuts

1cup couscous
1 ½ cup boiling vegetable stock (or water)
½ t of salt
¼ cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 large onion (diced)
1 28-oz can tomatoes drain and reserve liquid (1/2 cup juice)
1 ½ t minced fresh basil or 1 t dried
1/3 cup pine nuts
5 cups fresh spinach (three cans of Allen’s Popeye-brand spinach. Ugh)
Ground Black Pepper to taste
1 cup grated Muenster Cheese
 
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Pour glass of white wine, dry, or tall vodka-based cocktail with crushed ice.
 
Combine couscous, boiling stock and salt with large in large bowl, cover with plate to seal and let rest for five minutes. Fluff.
 
Heat olive oil in large skillet (cast iron or Swiss Diamond) over medium heat. You better have gas. All electric? What were you thinking?
 
Sauté garlic and onions ten minutes or until onions are lightly caramelized. Add drained tomatoes and cook additional ten minutes, stirring often. Fold the mixture into the couscous and mix in reserved tomato juice, basil, pine nuts, spinach and pepper. Spread half of couscous mix in 12 x 12 in baking dish. Sprinkle on cheese then top with remaining couscous. Finish the drink and get another. Cover with foil and bake twenty-five minutes at 375 degrees.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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