Name: Pastilla de Faisán
Yield: Serves 6 to 8
Ingredients: 150 g (5 oz) chopped dried fruit (apricots, prunes, peaches or pears, or a mixture); 2 teaspoons each cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds, crushed; icing sugar, toasted almonds, black olives, fresh mint leaves – to garnish; 200 mls (7 oz) strong pheasant stock; 1-2 tablespoons pickled lemon, chopped – optional; 6 free-range eggs; 12 sheets of filo pastry – about 225 g (½ lb; 3 tablespoons caster sugar; 125 g (4 oz) flaked almonds, fried gently in butter; 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon; 750 g (1½ lbs) cooked pheasant, off the bone; 150 g (5 oz) butter, melted

Preparation info

Serves
6 to 8

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Modern Classics

By Frances Bissell

Published 2000

About

The pheasant pastilla recipe is based on a wonderful pigeon pastilla we ate in Paris, at Darkoum, one of the city’s best Moroccan tables. Incidentally, I call the dish pastilla, not bstila, bisteeya or any of the other transliterations. This is what Madame and Monsieur Lamrini call it on their menu, and I consider them the experts. In its original version, young pigeon and over a hundred layers of tissuelike ouarka dough are used.