(Serves 6)

750 g cooked chicken or rabbit off the bone
6 eggs
100ml poultry stock
150g butter, melted
12 to 18 sheets of filo pastry (about 225g)
3 tablespoons caster sugar
125g flaked almonds, fried gently in butter
1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
150g chopped, dried fruit (apricots, prunes, peaches, or pears, or a mixture)
20g pickled lemons, chopped (optional)
2 teaspoons each cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds, crushed

To garnish:
Icing sugar, toasted almonds, black olives and fresh mint leaves

Beat the eggs with the stock, and cook gently in a non-stick frying pan, as if you were making scrambled eggs. When the mixture has thickened slightly, remove the pan from the heat, and let it cool. Preheat the oven to 180˚C, gas mark 4.

Brush a round cake tin with butter and brush the first two sheets of pastry with butter, and line the tin with them so that the edges hang over the rim. Cut the next four sheets to the diameter of the tin, brush them with melted butter, and lay them in the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle half the sugar, almonds and cinnamon on to the pastry, and spoon on three quarters of the egg mixture.

Shred or mince the meat, and mix it with the dried fruit, pickled lemon, spices, and the rest of the sugar, almonds and cinnamon. Spread this mixture in the dish, and spoon over the remaining egg mixture.

Cut four more sheets of dough to fit the tin, brush them with melted butter, and arrange them on top of the filling. Fold over the over-lapping pastry as neatly as possible. Then cut two final sheets to fit, brush them with butter, and place them on top.

Bake for 40 minutes; raise the temperature to 200˚C/400˚F, gas mark 6, and cook for a further 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

Serve the pastilla hot or warm, thickly dusted with icing sugar. Heat a couple of skewers and use them to make grill marks in the sugar. This sweet and savoury pie is also very good cold.

Cook’s note:
The pastilla can also be built up, free-form, on a work top, and carefully transferred to a baking sheet; this works especially well when making individual pastillas. Simply butter three sheets of filo, stack one on top of the other at angles, and heap the filling in the middle. Flatten it to a hamburger-shaped round and enclose in the pastry. Place on a baking sheet with the smooth surface uppermost, and continue until you have made 4 or 6 pastries. The smaller ones need 25 to 30 minutes cooking time.

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