I ate my first B’stilla years ago in Casablanca. I fell in love. (Cue the music: As time Goes By.)
We had travelled to Spain to visit Jim Shelton, a teacher friend who had moved to Alicante. Then, on a romantic whim, we booked a one-week junket to Morocco.
Casablanca. Marrakech. Rabat. Fes. Tangier. It was a magical itinerary for me–souqs, medinas, Rick’s Cafe. Casablanca had long been near the top of my bucket list.
Why Casablanca? Casablanca, of course!
The movie was a favorite–romance at its best, in my book. I’d seen Bogart’s Rick tell Bergman’s Ilsa “Here’s looking at you, kid” so many times by the time we finally made the trip that I could recite long passages of dialogue from memory. You have to picture me channeling Ilsa gazing into Rick’s eyes, listening to Sam play As Time Goes By, and steeling myself not (ever-never-ever) to get on that damned plane at the end of the movie.
But, back to real life… When our Air Moroc flight landed in Casablanca, we learned that the two of us were the whole tour when we were met in the dusty Mohammed V terminal by a man named Hasan wearing a fez. Hasan, an aging Moroccan soccer player, turned out to be our private driver-cum-tour guide.
And thank heaven for Hasan. His brio got us past a lot of hurdles on our trip. There was the night we were abruptly bumped from our hotel in Marrakech by the King’s entourage and the day I willfully (and, perhaps, naively) announced my plan to take a walk through the main souq in Tangier– by myself.
Hasan wasn’t having any of it and voiced strenuous objections to my husband, Dixon, who knew enough not to challenge my plan . (Dixon was a smart man.) I learned later that Hasan trailed me in his car and on foot all day as I wandered the exotic alleys of Tangier’s souq.
Yes. I was willful. Even then.
But, back to the B’stilla. We shared our first B’stilla in a small Casablanca restaurant with Hasan and his wife.
That first B’stilla was a culinary revelation for me. The idea of a savory phyllo-wrapped pie filled with scrambled eggs, onions, cilantro and nuts was great all by itself, but the genius idea of generously dusting the whole thing, warm from the oven, with powdered sugar blew me away.
Powdered sugar on a savory dish?
No. Couldn’t possibly work!
Or, to use a movie reference, I was, as Claude Rain’s wonderfully-played Vichy collaborator, Captain Renault, so famously said in the movie, “shocked, shocked.” (Here is the famous shocked, shocked clip for anyone who, like me, enjoys rewatching Casablanca again and again. I know I’m not alone. Some people have Star Wars. I have Casablanca. Anyone else with me on this?)
Shock aside, the powder sugar-covered B’stilla was excellent. Beyond excellent–it was mind-blowingly (is that a word?) wonderful!
I’ve bought several Middle Eastern-themed cookbooks in my cookbook-buying frenzy of 2017, but this recipe for B’stilla comes from a cookbook that I’ve long had on my bookshelves, Kitty Morse’s North Africa:the Vegetarian Table. I have previously written about Morse’s inspired recipes and posted her recipe for Harira soup–a staple around my house. You can find the recipe on Blue Cayenne here.
Try this exceptional B’stilla recipe…”Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow…but soon.” (Forgive me. I’m weak.No amount of personal discipline could keep me from working my all-time favorite bit of Casablanca dialogue into the last lines of this post: Maybe not today…)
Oh, and by the way, there was no Rick’s cafe in Casablanca when we visited (although one was opened in 2004). Bummer.
Here is my take on Kitty Morse’s wonderful recipe. Her cookbook is available on Amazon here.
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