Couscous, Mohamed Baya likes it pink, colored with beets. With vegetables in brunoise, pumpkin in mousseline and turnips in tiles, to vary the textures. With scallops or sea bream, washed down with a crayfish bisque. But whatever his way of revisiting this emblematic Maghreb dish, the Moroccan chef never omits a hint of cinnamon. This sweet flavor is his “madeleine de Proust”.

At the stove of La Table clandestine (a table d’hôtes concept he launched in 2017 in Casablanca, in the heart of the old city center with its Art Deco buildings), the 40-year-old chef remembers the day he cooked couscous for the first time. “It was in Paris, where I made my debut,” he says. I was second in a restaurant near Les Halles. We had sprinkled the juice with ras el-hanout, and in this mixture of spices I smelled cinnamon, almost imperceptible if you don’t know it’s there. Suddenly, I went back years! It was the missing flavor of my mother’s couscous. »

A dish that takes you back in time, couscous is also one of those that brings people together. “There is nothing more social than couscous” in the eyes of this enthusiast, known to Moroccans for having been a member of the jury of the “MasterChef” television competition and, this year, of the national selection for the Bocuse d’Or Africa . On Friday, the day of prayer, “you will always see large plates wandering from house to house,” he says: “Because couscous has to be prepared in large quantities to be shared. It is the dish of religious festivals and family reunions par excellence. »

Rare moment of North African union

It is a symbol of “living together”, recognized Unesco, in December 2020, by including couscous and its traditions on the list of intangible cultural heritage. In a rare moment of North African union, the candidacy file had been brought jointly by Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, which had long disputed the paternity of this dish. So much so that this inscription had been hailed both as the recognition of what these four North African countries have at their strongest in their culinary culture, but also as an ingredient of rapprochement between Algeria and Morocco, whose relations are undermined by the Western Sahara file.

A culinary agreement, however, questioned according to the vagaries of diplomacy. A year later, in November 2021, when the two Maghreb rivals had severed their relations, the Moroccan Minister of Culture, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, announced that he wanted to give couscous a “Morocco label” – even if the approach had little chance of succeeding, Unesco having put an end to the debate.

In the eyes of scientists, this ancestral dish does not adapt well to borders. Just like these many cultural elements that Algeria and Morocco accuse each other of appropriating, such as raï, zellige, caftan… The origin of couscous goes back to the Middle Ages and even before. “Utensils similar to couscous dishes, present in the tomb of the Berber king Massinissa [circa 240-148 BC. J.-C.], are evoked by the historian Lucie Bolens, while a fragment of couscoussier of the 9th century was discovered near Tiaret “, in Algeria, reports the Algerian expert Ouiza Gallèze, who coordinated the file UNESCO alongside counterparts from the other three countries. “At that time, she specifies to avoid any controversy, Tiaret was neither in Algeria nor in Morocco: it was the same kingdom. »

The “royal” couscous, a heresy

In a writing from the twelfth century, couscous is quoted by Ibn Al-Banna Al-Marrakushi, a scholar from Marrakech: “He says that when the Arabs arrived, in the seventh century, they found couscous so good that doctors prescribed to patients, continues Ouiza Gallèze. In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldoun, great master of thought, quoted him as a reference to define the man of the Maghreb: he is the one who “wears the burnous and eats couscous”. »

“Historically, couscous is an essential dish, as ordinary as bread and soup, consumed every day in the pre-colonial dietary habits of the Maghreb,” adds Moroccan historian Mohamed Houbaida. A dish of Berber origin that it would be wrong to reduce to a handful of variants, he underlines, as the recipes – and the appellations – are endless. Wheat or barley semolina, with caramelized onions, seven vegetables, argan oil… “As we are used to saying, summarizes this specialist, there are as many couscous as villages! »

As for which is the best of all, Chef Baya rules out the so-called “royal” multi-meat version, with merguez sausages and lamb chops. This French invention is heresy in the southern Mediterranean, where “we don’t mix meats and we don’t cook food separately,” he points out. In the Maghreb, “Moroccans will surely say of their couscous that it is more complex, more worked with spices, but other countries will be able to say the same thing of theirs”. Besides, it is better to answer in the least controversial way, the one that generally makes everyone agree: “The best couscous is my mother’s. »