Name: Baked Fish Stuffed with Almond Paste (Poisson Farci aux Amandes)
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Moroccan
Ingredients: 1 lemon, peeled and all pith removed, sliced paper thin; 1 teaspoon kosher salt; ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 2 tomatoes, sliced; 1 onion, finely chopped; 6 cloves garlic, minced; ½ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed and steeped in ¼ cup water; 6 tablespoons olive oil; 3 hard-cooked eggs; 3 eggs; freshly ground black pepper to taste; ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley; 1 cup fresh toasted bread crumbs; 1 ½ cups blanched almonds, toasted and chopped; ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg; ½ teaspoon ground mace; one 4-pound whole fish, such as sea bass, snapper, or salmon; 2 to 3 tablespoons kosher salt, plus more to taste

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Saffron Shores

By Joyce Goldstein

Published 2002

About

In traditional Moroccan kitchens, a very sweet almond paste filling is stuffed inside a whole fish, which is then baked. In this version, however, the filling is savory and is a combination of two recipes, one from Moroccan Jewish Cookery, by Viviane and Nina Moryoussef, who attribute it to the town of Essaouira, and one from La cuisine juive d’Afrique du Nord, by Jeanne Ifergan.