Pastilla

Pastilla (, also called a bastilla or a North African pie) is a meat or seafood pie in Maghrebi cuisine made with warqa dough (), which is similar to filo. It is a specialty of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, where its variation is known as malsouka. It has more recently been spread by emigrants to France, Israel, and North America. thumb|Poultry pastilla ornately dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon

== History == The name of the pie comes from the Spanish word pastilla, meaning either "pill" or "small pastry", with a change of p to b common in Arabic. The historian Anny Gaul attests to recipes that bear "a strong resemblance to the stuffing that goes inside modern-day bastila" in 13th century Andalusi cookbooks, such as ibn Razīn al-Tujībī's . This recipe, in Gaul's words, calls for "cooking pigeon with cinnamon, almonds, saffron, onion, and eggs, as well as a double-cooking process similar to today's conventional recipe, by which the ingredients are first cooked in a pot and then finished in the oven."