(Paleo) Chicken Bastila

Fresh out of the oven!

My personal tradition of these days we call Christmas and Christmas Eve revolve around making some good food. This year I spent several weeks considering what to make, including some rumination of different seafood options. But then I read Melissa's (Clothes Makes the Girl) recipe for Paleo Chicken Bastila, and decided to give it a go. I found the lengthy cooking time and celebratory nature of the dish fitting. Traditionally this is served as an appetizer on special occasions, and is a pie of chicken, cinnamon & sugar, and almonds all in layered pastry dough with a dusting of confectioners sugar on top. Here is a nice article and recipe about traditional Bastila with photos.

My Charming Companion has particularly strong memories of Bastila from eating at Marrakesh, a Moroccan restaurant in Philadelphia. He ate there about 3 times over 20 years ago, but has thought of the sweet chicken pie ever since. (He told me last night while eating dinner that he had become inordinately excited at the prospect of my making a paleo bastila, but was playing it cool.) It was great that he had eaten it before because there could be some comparison between his memory of bastila and the one on the plate before us. We ate it as they served it in the restaurant: in the dark and with our hands.

It was delicious. When I make this again, I will do the filling prep the day before. It will save time because you don't need to wait out the cooling, and will make assembly much easier. I also would love to actually serve this as an appetizer to a main meal of something less sweet. We ate it as the entree here, but the sweetness of it lends to a more secondary dish than a main one. Not thinking about the sweetness, I made a carrot and beet salad to serve with the bastila, but that was too many sweet things. Bastila would be better with a tart, olive-y salad with tomatoes and cucumber, or lemony greens or something. It wants a companion that is salty and tart.

Sprinkling the "almond dust" over the egg layer

2nd chicken layer

Final "almond dust" layer topping

Yum!

My thoughts for the recipe (which was lovely):

• I will use one additional egg next time in the egg custard part (plus a little more liquid to cook down from the chicken) to add to overall moistness.
• I want to pour some ghee over the chicken layers to get more of the buttery pastry taste. 
• Sprinkle cinnamon directly on top of the whole thing to really up the initial cinnamon sensory flavor.
• I'll simplify the bottom pastry crust to food process all ingredients and press them into the pie pan. I've made crusts this way before (with cold or melted ghee/coconut oil) and had them turn out great. This will save a little fussiness.

So - there was the holiday dinner. I did get my fancy seafood in last weekend by making scallops and shrimp on pea puree, and I made gravlox to bring to a family dinner today. I tasted it last night and it turned out amazing! I'll be posting both of those recipes later this week!