Pastilla

Ingredients

• Chicken — in pieces1.5 kg
• Warqa or filo pastry400 g
• Almonds250 g
• Onions4
• Eggs6
• Butter150 g
• Saffron1 pinch
• Ground ginger1 tsp
• Cinnamon2 tbsp
• Icing sugar100 g
• Orange blossom water2 tbsp
• Coriander40 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Braise the chicken with the onion, saffron, ginger, coriander and a little water for an hour, until tender.

   65 min

2. 2

   Lift out the meat, shred it, and reduce the sauce with the onion to a thick paste.

   20 min

3. 3

   Beat the eggs into the hot paste and stir over a low heat to coarse curds, then cool it.

   12 min

4. 4

   Fry the almonds golden, cool them and grind them with half the icing sugar and a spoon of cinnamon.

   15 min

5. 5

   Line a tin with overlapping sheets of pastry, buttering each, with a generous overhang.

   12 min

6. 6

   Layer in the egg and onion mass, then the meat, then the almond layer, and sprinkle with orange blossom water.

   12 min

7. 7

   Fold the edges in, cover with two more sheets, brush with butter and bake at 190 °C for forty minutes. Dust with icing sugar and cinnamon.

   48 min

About the dish

The sweet against savoury here is not a curiosity but the substance of the dish: icing sugar and cinnamon go over a meat filling, and Moroccans consider a pastilla without them unfinished.

The filling comes in two layers: meat with onion and egg below, ground almond with sugar above. They must not be mixed — the whole contrast is lost.

Eggs are beaten into the reduced sauce and stirred to coarse curds. That egg mass binds the meat layer, and without it the pie collapses when cut.

Worth knowing

• — The filling must be cold. Warm, it melts the butter between the sheets and no layers form.
• — The top is dusted with icing sugar and finished with a lattice of cinnamon. That is not only for looks: the cinnamon belongs on the surface rather than inside.
• — Pastilla is cut hot but served warm. Fully cooled it loses its crispness, and reheating has to be in an oven rather than a microwave.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

44 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Morocco

• Chicken tagine with preserved lemon — Chicken braised with preserved lemons and olives. The sourness comes from the peel, not the flesh.
• Harira — A thick soup of lentils, chickpeas and tomato, bound with a flour slurry and finished with lemon.
• Chebakia — Flower-shaped biscuits deep-fried and steeped in honey with sesame.