Pastilla

Pastilla is spiced chicken and almonds wrapped in paper-thin warqa pastry, baked until crisp and dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. It's a Fez specialty, and the mix of savoury spiced meat with sweet cinnamon and sugar in the same bite is deliberate — the dish sits between a main course and a dessert rather than settling clearly into either category.

What it really is

Chicken, traditionally pigeon in the oldest versions, simmers with onion, saffron and warm spices until tender, then shreds and mixes with a rich, cinnamon-scented sauce reduced from the cooking liquid. Toasted almonds, ground and sweetened, layer alongside the meat between sheets of warqa — a pastry rolled and stretched paper-thin, similar in spirit to the malsouka used in Tunisian brik — with the layers overlapping to fully enclose the filling. It bakes until the pastry turns deeply golden and shatteringly crisp, then finishes with a generous dusting of cinnamon and icing sugar arranged in a pattern across the top.

The sweet dusting on top is a real, defining feature, not a garnish someone can skip. A pastilla without its cinnamon-and-sugar finish loses the specific savoury-sweet contrast that separates it from an ordinary chicken pie — the sugar and spice on the crust are doing real flavour work against the rich filling underneath.

How it's served

• Warm, cut into wedges, dusted visibly with cinnamon and sugar.
• As a starter at a formal meal or celebration, sometimes as a main course in smaller households.
• With mint tea, a traditional pairing.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat in the pastry, the egg if used in the filling, and the almonds.
• Say if it's chicken or the more traditional pigeon, since the two are genuinely different orders.
• Note the sweet cinnamon-sugar finish, since guests expecting a purely savoury pie may be surprised.