We dare to say that a huge part of the traveling pleasure comes from new foods. We love to wander around markets and taste new dishes. It’s not a secret that in Morocco one can find some of the best street foods in the world. Snail soup, amlou paste, sheep’s head sandwich or chebakia- a sesame cookie, are only a few of the extraordinary foods you can get on almost every corner of Fez, Marrakesh or Agadir. What we love the most is definitely Moroccan Pastilla – a filo pastry snack filled with chicken meat, apricots, and almonds. Yummy!
Moroccan Pastilla
Ingredients:
- 6 boneless chicken thighs or 2 double chicken breasts
- 1 large red onion, finely chopped
- 100 g almonds, chopped
- 100 g almond flakes, roasted
- 90 g dried apricots, finely chopped
- walnut-sized piece of ginger, sliced
- a handful of parsley, chopped
- 6 sheets of filo pastry
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- Icing sugar for dusting
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 0,5 l chicken stock
- zest of 1 orange
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp honey
Spices:
- 1 tbsp cinnamon (plus 1 tsp for dusting)
- cardamom (1 tsp)
- 1 tsp turmeric
Preparation:
- Heat two spoons of olive oil in a deep pot, add onion, garlic, and ginger and cook until soft.
- Add all the spices, cook for one minute to release the aroma, add chicken and flour.
- Pour in chicken stock, cover the pot and leave to simmer for 40 minutes.
- Remove the chicken from the pot, add almonds and honey and turn up the heat to reduce the illiquid by half.
- Shred the chicken using two forks.
- Put the chicken back to the sauce, together with orange zest, apricots, almond flakes, and parsley. Leave to cool.
- Unwrap the filo pastry. Keep the unused sheet under a damp towel- they dry up very quickly.
- Put a big spoon of the filling in the down left-hand corner and fold it like a large samosa. Repeat that with all the sheets.
- Put the pastillas on a baking tray and brush them with beaten egg.
- Bake for around 25 minutes in 180 C.
- To give it a real Moroccan flavor, dust your pastillas with a mix of powder sugar and cinnamon.
This was our Moroccan Pastilla / بسطيلة recipe. Click HERE for our Moroccan Harira Soup recipe.
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