warqa a paper-thin N. African pastry resembling a somewhat stiff filo. It is made by tapping a lump of dough on a heated griddle and removing the thin layer that sticks (hence its Algerian name, malsuqa, ‘that which sticks’). Warqa is used in tharid, many pastries (including the elaborate squab pie bestila) and brik, the flat, triangular fried version of the Turkish börek characteristic of tunisia.
© the Estate of Alan Davidson 1999, 2006, 2014 © in the Editor’s contribution to the second and third editions, Oxford University Press 2006, 2014.