Moroccan Seafood Bastilla

Moroccan seafood bastilla is a rich mixture of shrimp, calamari, and whitefish, seasoned with herbs and spices, fluffed out with cellophane noodles, and wrapped in "warqa" (Arabic word for "paper") a Moroccan filo dough made fresh daily. In coastal cities like Essaouira and Agadir, bastilla is available in the souks in individual serving sizes. But wherever I tried it, it underwhelmed. There was a potentially great dish there, but the flavors were muted. 

It seemed strange that the seafood bastilla should be as bland as it was. After all, its cousin, chicken bastilla, albeit with a much different set of ingredients and spice mixture, is such a special occasion dish that I'd ask Nabila, our housekeeper in Fes, to make it whenever there were guests. 

The seafood bastilla I'd tried contained ingredients that blunted the flavor of the fish, like grated Swiss or Gruyere cheese, and reconstituted mushrooms. I thought there had to be a tastier variant but I couldn't find one in 10 years. 

So in my effort to improve on the recipe, I ditched the cheese and fungi, doubled down on the spices, and added a few extra things like cilantro and shallots and ginger, which are all boilerplate ingredients in much of Moroccan cuisine. What I've produced is how I think it should taste, so I'm passing it on to you, pardon my presumption.

With Linda and Kim at the grilled fish kiosks near Place Moulay Hassan in Essouira

The bustling, bastilling, Rue Mohamed El Qorry in Essaouira

The bastillas in the shop window at Superbe Bastilla in Rue Mohamed El Qorry in Essaouira. The Arabic is pronounced Bastila bFuaaki Al B'ar, or 'with Fruits of the Sea'. Note the casual approach to the Roman alphabet transliteration, as if they got the first syllable of Bastilla and then said "ah, fuck it, they know what it is," and just threw in a few extra letters that were probably supposed to be in there somewhere. 

At my landlady's house party above my ground floor apartment, the men gathered on the first floor and ate bastilla while making small talk, while the women upstairs were having a riotous time, whooping it up on the second floor. Very traditional party, I'm told.

Businessmen and hippie surfers in Essaouira. Essaouira is one of the grooviest places in Morocco, an old fortress town, and the surf-rasta vibe lends the medina its frisson.

Ingredients

• 1-2 large cloves of garlic, chopped fine
• 1-2 shallots, chopped fine
• 1/2 tbsp. paprika
• 1/2 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. (heaping) ginger powder
• 1/2 tsp. chili powder or cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of saffron
• olive oil

• 1/2 lb. white fish, preferably low fat. Monkfish works pretty well. Cut in 1" cubes
• 1/2 lb. squid, sliced in rings, and chop the tentacles

• 1/2 lb. shrimp, shelled and deveined, chopped in large chunks (set one or two of these aside for garnish, preferably boiled in its shell)

• 3.5 oz. cellophane noodles (vermicelli), softened in hot water and drained
• 2-3 tbsp. parsley, finely chopped
• 2-3 tbsp. cilantro, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice

• 10 sheets of filo dough
• 1 stick melted butter

Instructions for cooking the filling

1. In a good-sized pot, sauté the minced garlic and shallots with the spices in olive oil until soft.
2. Add the diced fish and squid to the pot, and let simmer about 10 minutes while stirring, then add the shrimp and cook another 5 minutes.
3. Add the fresh parsley, lemon juice and noodles. Make sure the mixutre is not watery. 

Instructions for Constructing and Baking

1. Choose a pan of appropriate size for the sheets of dough you have.  I typically use round, 12" diameter pizza pan, and while the filo dough is typically 13" x 18", I cut off 5" to make the sheets square
2. Grease the bottom of the pan with butter.
3. Brush one sheet of filo dough with butter and lay it on the bottom of the pan. Repeat until you have 5 sheets, rotating the sheets as you lay them, so as not to create too thick a layer of filo dough when they are folded over.
4. Distribute the filling evenly, and fold the edges of the sheets over the filling.
5. Add the remaining 5 sheets of dough over the top of the filling, buttering them as you go and rotating them as you lay them.
6. Lift the edges of the pastry and tuck the top sheets of filo dough beneath the bottom sheets
7. Cover with aluminum foil and bake about 25 minutes in a 350 °F oven, then remove the foil and cook until golden brown, about 3-5 minutes or so.
8. Remove the bastilla and place on a serving dish. Garnish with a few sprigs of parsley and lemon or lime slices. And throw an extra shrimp (head on) on top of the pie for dramatic effect.

Side dishes

Serve with a simple side, like Maqouda, which are potato beignets coated in a turmeric-infused batter and deep-fried. Try this recipe by the author Nargisse Benkabbou, from her consistently and deliciously reliable My Moroccan Food blog.  

http://www.mymoroccanfood.com/home/maakouda

Sauce with the bastilla or no sauce?

As far as a sauce goes, the dish is quite tasty without any, but I think several would work well, and it's worth experimenting, as the next time I serve it, I'll want to include three sauces. Right now I'm imagining an orange sauce or a sweet & sour to bring out the tanginess without overwhelming the spices, or a lemon-parsley cream sauce, or a cockail sauce with Moroccan harissa, infused with horseradish and tomato paste. And then there's the classic Moroccan fish go-with, Chermoula, which is kind of like a pesto of parsley and cilantro, seasoned with cumin seed, coriander seed, paprika, cayenne, and lemon juice. Stay tuned. 

Sauce #1: Chermoula

I made up a batch of chermoula, old-school, mortar and pestle, and it slayed, providing a nice zip to the leftover bastilla. It's lemony, with herbs and spices, and there was enough heat in the bastilla that I didn't feel the need to add more cayenne than New York Times recipe called for.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012763-chermoula

Fresh Chermoula. It doesn't get any fresher.

Sauce #2: Beurre Blanc with Orange

This is a French butter sauce based on a reduction mix of shallots, orange zest, orange juice, and dry white wine that I tried on the remaining leftovers, and I loved it, but it's after 10 PM as I'm tasting it, and hunger is an awfully good sauce to start with. For the following recipe I cut the butter from two sticks down to one (there's a whole stick used in the bastilla already), and then added cardamom and vanilla extract. 

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/orange_beurre_blanc_sauce_for_seafood/

If you try the bastilla, let me know how it turns out. Your comments are welcome.