Whenever I am in Morocco visiting my Moroccan family, I always make sure to eat a great pastilla. Although it’s quite sweet, Moroccans c...
Whenever I am in Morocco visiting my Moroccan family, I always make sure to eat a great pastilla. Although it’s quite sweet, Moroccans consider this as a formal dish, not a dessert. It is a sweet and savory Moroccan pie. Pastilla is usually served as a second of many courses in a meal for very special occasions such as weddings. The traditional filling is the pigeon, roasted almond, sugar, cinnamon, eggs wrapped up in a pie (phyllo dough or Warka Dough. Despite the long list of ingredients, there is really nothing difficult about it. Phyllo dough is fragile and dries out quickly that is we need to work rapidly to make sure that the dough does not dry out before we are done. If you absolutely have to use the trasitional Moroccan Feuilles De Brick, It is one dish with everything, it can be accompanied with a salad, or served as a small appetizer (mini pastilla).
Ingredients
- 2 pound of chicken
- 4 sweet medium onions
- 5 Tbsp butter
- 1 saffron dose
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 6 eggs
- 1 cup fresh flat-leaf or Italian parsley, chopped
- 10 to 15 Phyllo dough sheets
- 140 grams (5 oz) blanched almonds
- Salt and pepper
- 1/2 cup clarified butter for brushing
DIRECTIONS
- Get all the ingredients ready.
- Chop onion and parsley.
- Preheat the oven to 400 °F / 205 °C.
- Spread almonds in one layer on a shallow baking pan.
- Roast for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden.
- Heat 4 Tbsp butter in a large pot. Braise the chicken pieces on all sides for a few minutes, then remove.
- Add the onions with the spices — ginger, cinnamon, saffron.
- Return the chicken to the pot, add 1 cup chopped parsley, season with salt and pepper, cover and gently simmer over low heat for about an hour.
- Remove the chicken.
- Reduce the chicken sauce until there is almost no liquid remaining
- Add the eggs to the sauce and stir constantly on low heat until you have a creamy consistency. Remove.
- Remove the meat from the bones and shred it with your fingers.
- Take a round cake mold (or tart ring) and brush it with melted butter.
- Thaw completely the frozen phyllo in the refrigerator for 24 hours and bring to room temperature before using it. The dough can be gummy if thawed too quickly outside the refrigerator.
- Make sure that the hands are dry when handling the phyllo dough.
- Cut the Phyllo sheets with a pair of scissors in half. Warp one half well with plastic wrap and then into a zip-style plastic bag.
- Lay one phyllo sheet on a flat surface (I use a silicone liner) and brush with clarified butter Line.
- Fold it in half and brush the two sides.
- Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut off a 2 – 3 inch wide strip of phyllo dough from one end.
- Line a baking sheet with silicone liner or parchment paper and place a buttered ring on top ( I use from 2 to 6 inch diameter).
Lay one strip of the phyllo on a tart ring, repeat the process 3 to 6 times times, each time laying the strips at different rotation points. Any remaining filo should be wrapped carefully and placed in the fridge for use in another recipe.
Place a layer of the chicken filling, add the egg mixture, then a layer of almond and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Fold ends of phyllo over filling and brush the top with melted butter.
- You can fold the pastilla into a triangle – Fold the dough over the filling to form a triangle.
- Continue folding in triangles until all of the edges are sealed (it is like folding a flag).
- Brush some melted butter over the end strip so that when you give it the final fold it stays shut.
- Preheat the oven to 400 °F / 205 °C.
- At this moment, you can freeze the wrapped pastilla in a plastic wrap to bake another day.
- Place the pastilla in the oven for 10- 15 minutes, remove the tart ring, then flip the pastilla and bake for another 15 – 20 minutes or until golden.
To serve, turn the pastilla out onto a plate and dust with icing sugar and cinnamon. Serve with a green salad.
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