In France they call it Couscous (or occasionally Couscous Royale when it’s served with chicken drumsticks and merguez sausages along with the standard cuts of lamb). You can think of it as a vegetable-prominent, lamb and tomato and chickpea stew served atop a copious bed of couscous grains, with harissa-spiked broth on the side.
With that research under my belt, combined with what I had on hand, what I was able to find at Trader Joe’s, and what Stephanie prefers (lamb 👎, chickpeas 👍), I cobbled together the following recipe.
When I looked up a recipe for black bean chili yesterday (spurred on by the odd can in our pantry), I only needed to glance at the ingredients to visualize how to cook it. Not because I’ve cooked this particular recipe before, or because I make chili frequently (I don’t—it’s not something Stephanie has ever really appreciated, until now), but I suppose just because I cook a lot in general. No humblebrag here, chili is obviously not rocket science. Most recipes consist of a simple 2-step algorithm: 1) brown protein in a skillet, and then 2) dump everything into a large pot and simmer for 2-3 hours. And I’m sure that would have rendered a perfectly serviceable chili using the ingredients below. Of course that’s not what I did, but what I did is based on my own personal relationship with each of the ingredients at this particular moment in time, and you might feel differently. So rather than try to codify what I did in prose, I’m just going to list the ingredients I used and leave the rest up to your interpretation and imagination. That said, the order in which I listed the ingredients is not by accident.
Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, only all-purpose and whole wheat flour are available at the supermarket (if at all). All-purpose is sold in 5-pound bags and whole wheat is commonly sold in 2-pound bags. The internet-famous no-knead bread recipe that everyone is making (in order to exert a modicum of control over something in their lives) calls for 400 grams of bread flour. One of the key differences in flour types (« though not the only! » interjects Alex, aka “frenchguycooking”) is protein content. Conveniently for us, The King Arthur Flour Company prints their flours’ protein content directly on the packaging. The all-purpose and whole wheat flour that we were able to buy are 11.7% and 14% protein, respectively. Furthermore, thanks to the internet, we discover that their bread flour, currently unavailable everywhere, is 12.7% protein. How many grams (rounded to the nearest integer) of all-purpose flour do we need to combine with how many grams of whole wheat flour to approximate the protein content of bread flour to use in the no-knead bread recipe?
Darker times may yet lie ahead, but on a hopeful note, the crepe myrtle tree in our front yard, which I worried I had killed due to lack of water last summer, then extensively trimmed back this winter (and as of late, I have been watering almost daily), just sprouted its first buds, several weeks after what seemed like every other tree in Fresno had exploded with white, purple, and pink confetti.
I got one of my favorite emails a few days ago, this time from Shreyash in India who wrote:
I bought 3 notebooks for my assignments. They had a QR code at the back of it, which I scanned. It took me to your website. It took me a little while to figure it out but I eventually did, thanks to your article. This notebook is from a local manufacturer. I am attaching the images of the notebook for you to look at.
