Chicken and Lamb Couscous

Original recipe by: Leslie Brenner

Inspired by a dish that’s traditional in Fes, Morocco — couscous with seven vegetables — this is one of my all-time favorite things to make. Basically it’s a vegetable-happy lamb-and-chicken stew that you serve over semolina couscous grains. Pass around extra broth for everyone to add as they like, along with harissa.

Eons ago, when I started making this couscous, I would prepare the couscous grains in fairly close accordance to the traditional way: steaming the grains several times several times, and raking it with my fingers in between steamings. I’d start the stew the previous day by soaking dried chickpeas overnight. And sometimes I’d make my own harissa. When I didn’t feel up to doing all that, I had a very good short-cut method that took the 5-minute instant couscous route, used canned chickpeas and harissa from a tube.

These days I have a new strategy, centered on the grains and th…