Adventures in Algerian Cooking

       So, this is the type of thing that always seems to happen to me.  Well intentioned, good mannered, gentle Kate always finds herself in the oddest of situations.  An uneventful day turned into a civil dinner with my mother who had fixed a traditional Algerian dish for our evening meal.  It was quite good and consisted of a heaping bowl full of couscous with a red broth stew of green beans, potatoes, carrots, and zucchini to spoon over it with a side dish of lamb and a sausage popular in the Maghreb (Northern Africa) to also put in our bowls.

       All was going great.  We were having a lovely conversation about what we were eating, the difference between coastal and mountain food in Algeria, and religion.  All went well until I started eating the meat.  Mind you, it all tasted fantastically good with the subtle hints of spice and citrus; however, it all started with one little bone.  I was a bit surprised to find it since typically you don't find bone in encased sausage, but I was very discreet and kept eating.  

       After a few minutes I had a little pile of metacarpal looking bones next to my bowl.  I was beginning to get a little unsettled, but I figured, what the heck, this is a true worldly experience.  Next I started on the lamb.  It proved quite tricky with a knife and fork as I couldn't quite tell which was bone, meat, or fat, but she informed me that it is impossible with utensils and to just use my hands.  Being used to BBQ, I dove right in.  However, once more I became increasingly unsettled as I started finding a lot of little bones and odd shaped tissue.  I chewed a bit on this one part that looked like promising meat, but it turned out to be a thin skin-like thing covering a scary shaped thing.

       Typically I'm not scared by food and will try anything once, but this thing was just too bizarre.  I sort of recognized the shape from somewhere but was in denial, so I moved on to the other piece of meat.  It was easily recognizable as a spinal vertebrae but thankfully there wasn't much meat so I had a good excuse to put it back in my bowl rather quickly, hoping that it wasn't tradition in Algeria to eat the marrow.  In order to not look rude for not eating the food put in front of me, I moved back to the scary first piece in search of the tiniest speck of edible portions.  

      Then in a mind-numbing, stomach churning, near gag inducing moment of terror, I realized what that odd shaped thing was....I had just gnawed on the spinal chord of a baby sheep.  Mon Dieu!!!  Lamb spine stew.  Spine.  Even the written word doesn't look like something edible.  Cactus spine, porcupine spine, my spine, spine, spine, spine!  I really shouldn't be weirded out because I'm used to other types of bone and tissue in my food, but something about the actual chewy, yellowish, rubber looking spinal chord just set off all types of alarms.  

      I seriously hope she could not see the terror in my eyes, because she is such a nice lady and has been nothing but hospitable.  However, I just couldn't eat another bite of meat.  I finished my couscous in silence and tried to rearrange the animal bits to look like I had gotten all the good stuff; again, just hoping it wasn't custom to eat the unmentionable bits as well.  The only food that sounds worse than eating baby sheep spinal chord are the boiled chicken feet that I've heard are popular in some Asian countries and possibly a Nigerian cow's foot soup that I heard about once.  

       Anyways, three minutes of teeth brushing and four squirts of Listerine mouth spray later, I am doing much better and the shock is subsiding.  Hopefully some Bob Dylan and a good nights sleep can help shake off the rest of a too adventurous escapade into Algerian cooking!  I love yall much, and hope I have sufficiently described my experiences so as to make sure you always avoid lamb spine stew.  

xoxo

-Kate Alice