Destination
Tangier
The story
Pastilla — sometimes bastilla or bstilla — is Morocco's most theatrical dish and the queen of the country's cuisine: a large, round, layered filo pie filled with shredded slow-cooked pigeon (traditionally) or chicken (in modern versions), toasted crushed almonds, scrambled spiced eggs, and a savoury sauce built on ginger, cinnamon and saffron. The finished pie is baked until deeply golden, then — the theatrical finish that makes it a Moroccan wedding centrepiece — dusted with icing sugar and criss-crossed with lines of ground cinnamon. It's the definitive sweet-savoury Moroccan dish and one of the country's most photographed plates.
Method
Warm butter and oil in a large pot. Cook onions 8 minutes until soft. Add garlic, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, pepper, saffron and salt; toast 60 seconds. Add chicken, coriander, parsley and water. Bring to simmer, cover, and cook 60 to 75 minutes until falling apart.
Lift chicken out. Cool briefly, then remove skin and bones and shred meat with two forks. Return the braising sauce to a hard simmer 15 minutes to reduce by two-thirds to a very thick, gravy-like consistency.
Off the heat, whisk the beaten eggs with salt and lemon juice. Return the reduced sauce to low heat. Pour in the eggs while stirring gently. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, stirring, until the eggs are just set into soft scrambled curds. Do not overcook. Set aside to cool.
Fry the whole blanched almonds in oil over medium heat 3 to 4 minutes until deep golden. Drain on paper. Cool completely, then pulse in a food processor with sugar, cinnamon and orange blossom water into a coarse crumb (not a paste — you want texture).
Preheat oven to 200C. Butter a 28cm round baking tin or oven-safe pan. Brush each filo sheet with melted butter and lay overlapping in the tin, letting the edges hang generously over the sides — you want a 20cm overhang all around. Use 8 to 10 sheets for the base.
Spread the shredded chicken evenly across the pastry base. Top with the egg-onion mixture, spreading level. Top with the almond mixture, spreading level. You should have three distinct layers.
Fold the overhanging pastry over the filling from all sides, pleating as you go, into a rough round parcel. Brush the top with beaten egg yolk. Add 2 more butter-brushed filo sheets on top, tucking under to make a tidy dome. Brush the whole surface with melted butter.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes until deeply golden. Cool 5 minutes on a rack. Flip carefully onto a serving platter (the crisper side goes up). Dust heavily with icing sugar, then draw parallel lines across the top with ground cinnamon using a sieve or a spoon. Serve immediately, cut in wedges with a knife.
Tips
- Reduce the braising liquid very thick. Any residual liquid soaks into the pastry and makes it soggy. Reduce to almost a paste before adding the eggs.
- Ouarka is the traditional pastry. Moroccan ouarka is thinner and more brittle than filo; if you can find it at a specialty grocer, it's the classical choice. Regular filo is a working substitute — use 2 sheets at a time to compensate for the thickness difference.
- Fry the almonds golden, not brown. Golden is the target flavour; brown is bitter. Watch the pan closely; they go from pale to burnt in 30 seconds.
- The sweet-savoury topping is not optional. The icing-sugar-and-cinnamon topping is the Moroccan signature. Doing it as a plain savoury pie is missing the point of pastilla.
- Serve immediately. The pastry loses its crackle within 30 minutes. Assemble a couple of hours ahead if needed, but bake right before serving.
More recipes
View all
Slow-cooked chicken tagine with preserved lemons, cracked green olives and a saffron-onion sauce. Morocco's Friday-lunch classic, eaten with khobz.
A dense, savoury chickpea-flour cake baked in a wood oven, sold sliced from paper on street corners. Tangier's Andalusi-Sephardic morning snack.
Layered filo pastry crisps sandwiched with almond-milk custard, dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. Fes's most elegant dessert.
Ring-shaped semi-hard biscuits scented with fennel, aniseed and sesame, twice-baked until golden. Morocco's tea-dunking staple, sold by weight at every pastry souk.
Paper-thin dough folded into a flaky square, cooked on a hot skillet until golden and buttery. Morocco's laminated breakfast pastry, eaten with honey.
Almond and raisin twice-baked biscuits, sliced from a loaf and dried until crisp. Morocco's biscotti-like tea companion.