Pastilla

What it is

Pastilla, also spelt bastila, is a round pie of layers of thin pastry, filled with poultry, eggs and crushed, sugared almonds.¹ It is seasoned with saffron, ginger, cinnamon and sugar, so that sweet and savoury come together.² The pastry is called warqa, “leaf” or “paper”, and resembles filo pastry.³ Harrell’s dictionary describes bestila as a pie of almond paste and the giblets of chicken or pigeon in a thin crust.⁴

According to Mohamed Oubahli, the word and the dish are known in most Moroccan cities; the filling varies: in Rabat the traditional pastilla is filled with almonds alone, elsewhere only with poultry or minced meat, and more recently also with fish and Chinese noodles.⁵ Among some Shluh in the south, according to Émile Laoust (1918), the word denoted simply a chicken with saffron.⁶

Where it comes from

Pastilla is associated with the Andalusian-influenced cuisines of Fez, Rabat and Tetouan.⁷ For Tetouan, Hassan Akdi and Noureddine Achboun attribute Andalusian roots to it.⁸ A study by the historian Idriss Bouhlila, by contrast, supports the supposition that the name and the warqa only came into the country after 1830 with families from the eastern Maghreb, by way of the cuisine of Tetouan, and considers the word Turkish.⁹

The name, too, is explained in different ways: the Oxford Companion to Food derives it from the Spanish pastel (pie), a cookery article on Middle East Eye from the Spanish pasta (dough); the latter also says that the Andalusians brought the dish to Morocco in 1492.¹⁰ Oubahli traces the word back to the Late Latin pasta and pastillum; it probably entered Moroccan Arabic by way of the Mozarabs, from Vulgar Latin or from the Spanish pastilla. It reached the urban speech of Morocco only late, however, together with the Moriscos expelled from Spain at the beginning of the 17th century; in Tangier, according to Louis Brunot (1952), it is pronounced with a non-emphatic s.¹¹ The dish itself Oubahli sees as an heir of the old oriental “cuisine of bread”, the tharid, in which thin flatbreads are soaked in broth or layered.¹²

History

Two 13th-century Andalusian cookbooks, among them Ibn Razin’s “Fadalat al-khiwan”, contain fillings similar to today’s, but neither the fine layers of pastry nor a dish of this name.¹³ In the 20th century, above all through the growing urban middle class, pastilla went from being a dish of the elite of a few cities to a national festive dish.¹⁴

How it is made

According to the Oxford Companion to Food, a large dish is lined with about six layers of warqa, on which are layered sugar, cinnamon and roasted almonds, a cream of eggs and broth and the pre-cooked meat of the pigeons, then more sheets of pastry.¹⁵ The top is decorated, brushed with egg and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.¹⁶ Pastilla used to be baked over charcoal in a tinned copper dish; today the oven is mostly used.¹⁷

In Tetouan pastilla is not sweet: instead of sugar and almonds, chicken, onions, eggs, cinnamon, saffron, parsley and smen, a preserved butter,¹⁸ go into the sheets of pastry; it is baked in a hot oven and eaten hot with the hands and without bread.¹⁹ Anny Gaul notes that there lemon replaces the sugar.²⁰

When

Pastilla is regarded as the festive dish par excellence and comes to the table at weddings, births and circumcisions.²¹ The Oxford Companion to Food describes it as a pigeon pie for special occasions, often very large.²² According to Oubahli, tradition has it that a great meal begins with a pastilla.²³