Pastilla aux fruits de mer — Tetouan, Morocco

Pastilla is a Moroccan pie of thin, layered pastry wrapped around a filling and baked until crisp. Its best-known form is sweet and built on pigeon or chicken with almonds and cinnamon, but coastal cities have also developed savory versions built on seafood, and this is one of them, filled with shrimp, squid and white fish. In Tetouan, a city on Morocco's Mediterranean coast with strong Andalusian roots, pastilla takes a maritime turn. Rice vermicelli, shrimp, squid and pieces of white fish are sautéed in chermoula, a marinade of cilantro, garlic and lemon common to Moroccan fish cookery, along with mushrooms and sometimes peppers, then sealed inside buttered sheets of warqa pastry. It is served as a starter at wedding meals, cut into portions for sharing. To prepare it, the shrimp, squid and fish are sautéed separately, briefly, in the chermoula so each keeps its texture, while the vermicelli is soaked in hot water, drained and cut short. Everything is combined with the sautéed mushrooms and chopped preserved lemon, then packed between layers of warqa brushed with melted butter in a buttered dish, with the edges folded and sealed before baking until the crust is golden and crackling. This seafood pastilla carries neither sugar nor cinnamon, the markers of its sweet, poultry-based counterpart: it is frankly savory, sharpened with chili and preserved lemon rather than rosewater or icing sugar. The mix of shellfish used can shift with what the market offers that day, and some cooks favor a firmer white fish while others lean more heavily on shrimp and squid.