On Friday night, we were treated to an incredible home-cooked Moroccan meal by our friends G & P. The impetus for this meal was a dinner the four of us had enjoyed at a local Moroccan restaurant. One of the dishes I had eaten was called Bisteeya. G, who was very familiar with Moroccan cuisine, understood that this dish was hard to prepare properly in a restaurant. He offered to treat us to a Moroccan meal prepared by him. Since he is the best chef/cook I have ever known, I knew this would be a special treat.
(On a previous occasion, before a trip to Provence, I had asked him if he could describe daube, a Provençal stew I had seen mentioned in a book on Provence. He not only described it, but he prepared a complete Provençal meal, including daube. I tried daube three times in Provence, including at Les Deux Garçons in Aix and Le Safari in Nice. None held a candle to his daube.)
On Friday, he prepared two main dishes for us - bisteeya and lamb shanks in Moroccan spices. Both were incredible.
Bisteeya is a chicken pie with chicken, onion, eggs, spices, and a layer of gound almonds, wrapped in filo dough and topped with confectioners sugar and cinamon. (The dish was originally made with pigeon.) It requires a great deal of time to prepare from scratch, the way he prepared it. I cannot begin to describe how mouthwateringly delicious this dish was.
Needless to say, the lamb was equally delicious.
The wines he served were two whites:
- Hugues Beauvignac Coteaux de Languedoc made with the Picpoul de Pinet grape
- Spy Valley Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand
Both were perfect accompaniments to this feast.
There are many examples of this recipe on the Internet. One of these recipes, with a picture of the finished product, can be found at http://www.suite101.com/content/bisteeya--moroccan-chicken-pie-a259546
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