Lemon-buttered couscous

The classic way to cook couscous, by steaming it in muslin over the stew it will accompany, thus absorbing some of the stew’s flavours, is very tricky for a restaurant to pull off, certainly for a restaurant not specializing in couscous - in the same way that pizza is very difficult to graft successfully on to a mixed-culture menu, and is done best by specialists. There is an excellent instruction on steaming couscous in a book called A Mediterranean Harvest