This is a recipe drawn from Aldo Santini's La Cucina Livornese. The man is above all a storyteller, and is wonderfully thorough, approaching his subject from a ways off so as to capture it all. This means he does digress, but we benefit. "Jews came to Livorno from Africa,"he says, "bringing their children, wives, and interests with them. They brought the coral industry, thus creating the commercial exchanges between Livorno, Antwerp and London. Jewish traders in London sent silver to Livorno in exchange for coral, which they sold, using the profits to buy diamonds from Brazil and India, which were then cut and sold to the Nobility throughout Europe. Jewish settlers opened Livorno's first printing press, and the first coffee shop. Thanks to the Jews who fled Spain, in 1632 Livorno had a bottega del caffè, which predates the ones opened in Venice, in 1645, and in Austria after the Turkish siege of 1683."

Mr. Santini also notes that one can find cuscus in restaurants throughout Italy, and that Renaissance chefs knew how to work with semolina. As a result many traditional pasta shapes derive from cuscus, including Tuscan manfrugoli, Trento's fregulati, Sardegna's fregula, and the grated pasta soups of Calabria and Sicily.

Giancarla Zuccherofino begins her explanation of the method by saying, "to make cuscus you'll need a cuscussiera: Two pots stacked one atop the other forming a perfect seal, with the upper pot's bottom being holed like a sieve to allow steam to rise. We make it Libyan style, because Miriam Leiser, one of my partners who has since moved to Israel, was of Libyan origin."

"All right,"says Mr. Santini. "What goes into the lower pot?"

"Fresh vegetables, as if you were going to make minestrone. Shredded cabbage, peas, diced carrots and zucchini, celery. And in the meantime we prepare a soffritto by mincing carrots, onions and celery and sautéing them in good olive oil. The vegetables go into the soffritto, and when they've wilted everything goes into the bottom of the cuscussiera, with water, and gets covered with a lid. Once it comes to a boil the lid is replaced by the upper half of the cuscussiera, which we fill with the semolina we've been preparing in the meantime."

"It doesn't drop through the holes?"

"No, because it's fairly solid, and the holes are small. The semola, which must be quite coarse grained, cuscus semola, is worked in a bowl for more than a half hour, with beaten eggs mixed with water, according to the Libyan custom, which favors eggs over the more common olive oil. The eggs make the cuscus extraordinarily light and delicate."

"And how do you work the semola?"

"By hand, in a bowl. Rubbing it between the palms and moistening it a little at a time. It shouldn't form up into dough. As the semola absorbs the moisture from the water and the eggs it swells, but doesn't form balls. It stays loose. Then we cook it for an hour over the cuscussiera, during which time it absorbs the aromas from the minestrone simmering below it. After the hour we turn the cuscus back into the bowl."

"Why?"

To work it some more, moistening it with a little vegetable broth if it's overly dry. It has to be worked patiently, rubbed between the palms, for another hour. A good cuscus takes time and love; only with this double working do we obtain the true, light, bubbly, airy semolina. I repeat: Bubbly. If it squeaks between the fingers or under the teeth, it wasn't cooked enough."

"And now we're done."

"Hardly. The semolina thus obtained goes back into the cuscussiera and cooks for another hour. Then we work it for another five minutes, turning it with a slotted spoon, and adding a little unsweetened butter to make it softer. Now it's ready to be served in the bowls, one per diner, together with the greens and meatballs, these to in separate bowls."

"What are your meatballs like?"

"Tiny, marble-sized. They're meatballs made with ground beef, chopped onion, potatoes and enough spices to make them spicy. They're cooked separately, and added to the broth only at the last minute, when they're firm and won't crumble, to absorb some flavor from the soup. Then we remove them from the pot and serve them with well-sauced beans cooked with garlic and onion in the uccelletto style. The diners will obviously have plates, where they can combine the greens, cuscus, and beans with meatballs as they prefer.

What You'll Need:

For the semola:

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) coarse semola

An emulsion made by beating together 3 eggs, salt, 1/2 cup olive oil, and 1 tablespoon water

For the soup:

A battuto obtained by mincing 4 onions, 2 carrots, 3 ribs celery

1 head cabbage, cut into thin strips

10 ounces (300 g) peas

3 carrots

3 ribs celery

3 zucchini

1 pound (500 g) canned tomatoes

For the meatballs:

10 ounces (300 g) ground meat

3 eggs

Salt

Grated cheese

1/2 a loaf of white bread (what's called pane a cassetta in Italy), dipped in milk and squeezed dry

1 potato

1 onion, grated

Parsley

(Mix all, form the mixture into balls, and fry sauté them over a fairly brisk flame)

For the beans to go with the meatballs:

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) white beans, soaked over night

1 pound (1/2 k) canned tomatoes

Salt and pepper

A soffritto made by mincing 3 large onions and sautéing them until light gold in abundant olive oil.

Add the beans to the soffritto, then stir in the tomatoes and add boiling water to cover. Cook, adding more water as necessary, until the beans are done; they should be rather liquid. Cook the meatballs in the beans for a few minutes after simmering them in the soup.

A note: you will have noted that these meatballs are not kosher. Giuliana Ascoli Vitali Norsa gives a similar recipe, omitting the cheese and soaking the bread in broth rather than milk to moisten it. She also gives this recipe, which she says is Sephardic:

Polpette per Cuscussù -- Moksci

• 1 1/2 pounds (700 g) ground beef
• 1 egg
• 1/2 an onion minced
• 3 tablespoons bread paste made by dipping bread in broth and squeezing it dry
• 3 artichokes
• 2 zucchini
• A piece of cauliflower
• For the sautéing:
• 1 egg
• Breadcrumbs
• Salt, pepper
• Oil for frying

Combine the meat, bread paste, egg, and season the mixture to taste with salt and pepper. Strip away all the tough outer leaves of the artichokes, cut them in half, discarding any fuzz you may find in the chokes, and cut them into wedges; cut the other vegetables into wedges too, and wrap a little meat around each piece of vegetable so as to form balls. Dip each meatball thus obtained into a lightly beaten egg, roll it in breadcrumbs, and fry them in hot oil.

Set a pot on the fire with a minced clove of garlic and the onion, and sauté the vegetables n olive oil until they onion is golden, then add some water and a dot of tomato paste, and finish cooking the meatballs in the sauce.

Use them instead of the meatballs above.

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