Seffa

Fine couscous steamed with butter instead of broth and built into a mound with cinnamon drawn down the sides.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (butter).

Ingredients

• 500 g fine couscous
• 100 g butter, in pieces
• cold water, for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 100 g icing sugar, plus more to finish
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 150 g blanched almonds
• 80 g raisins, soaked
• 2 tablespoons orange blossom water
• oil, for frying the almonds

Method

1. THE STEAMING IS EXACTLY AS ON THE COUSCOUS PAGE and is not repeated here: three steamings over about ninety minutes, raked apart with oiled hands and rested between each, never boiled and never soaked in a kettle. Everything that page says about why applies here. What follows is only what is DIFFERENT about seffa.
2. IT IS STEAMED OVER PLAIN WATER AND DRESSED WITH BUTTER, not steamed over a broth. There is no meat and no stock anywhere near it; the flavour is butter, sugar, cinnamon and orange blossom. Steamed over a savoury broth by habit, it tastes of neither one thing nor the other.
3. THE GRAIN IS FINE, not the coarse couscous used with a stew. It takes less water, swells faster and gives the soft powdery texture this wants; coarse grain makes something that will not hold a mound.
4. AND THE SUGAR GOES ON AT THE VERY END, after the last steaming. Steamed with the grain it dissolves, weeps and makes it claggy.
5. Almonds fried in a little oil until golden, drained, and half of them chopped coarsely. Raisins soaked in warm water 20 minutes and drained.
6. The three steamings done as on the couscous page, over plain boiling water, with the salt added at the second raking and the orange blossom water at the third.
7. After the final steaming, tipped into a wide bowl while still very hot.
8. The butter forked through in pieces until it has all disappeared, then the chopped almonds and the raisins.
9. TASTED FOR TEXTURE: it should be loose, separate and slightly damp. A little more hot water forked through if it is dry.
10. Half the icing sugar and half the cinnamon forked through.
11. Piled into a tall mound on a wide plate with the hands, pressed gently into a cone.
12. The rest of the icing sugar dusted thickly over the whole mound, then LINES OF CINNAMON DRAWN DOWN THE SIDES from the point, through a paper cone or between finger and thumb.
13. The whole almonds pressed into the sides. Served warm, eaten with the fingers from the outside in.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Morocco · All recipes