bastela

its preparation requires a certain amount of practice and a lot of skill but, you can take my word for it, is ono of the most delicious dishes te be found in Moroccan cooking.

stuffing for bastela

lngredients for about 12 people:

* 8 pigeons * 3 soups bowls full fo the brim with chopped parsley * 1 1/2kg (3 ibs 5 oz) of grated onions

* 450 g (1 ibs) of butter * 8 eggs * 1 teaspoonful of pepper

* 1/2 teaspoonful of cinnamon * 1/2 teaspoonful of saffron (crushed saffron flowers)

* 300 g (11 oz) of almonds and oil for frying them * 1 teaglass full to the brim with sugar salt

Preparation: 

Wash the pigeons and put them, whote, in a thick-bottomed saucepan. Add salt, the chopped parsley, the grated onions, pepper, saff ron, cinnamon and sugar, Put the water in later only if there is no liquid left trom the pigeons before they are cooked. Cook on a good medium heat and stir from time fo time. Take the pigeons out of the sauce- pan when cooked and drain them of any stuffing that may have got inside them during cooking.

Leave the stuffing to cook, stirring constantly,until alt the water has evaporated, Then add 8 eggs beaten as tor an omelette and pour over gently, stirring alt the time and rernoving the saucepan from the heat, After cooking, cut the pigeons up without boning them. In the meantime, skin the alrnonds and fry them in oil. Take off the fire as soon as they begin to colour anci turn out at once into a strainer to avoid going black.

Crush coarsely in a mortar or pass through a vegetable sieve, using the coarsest grid. Then add to the sugar. Add 3 soupspoonfuls of the oil in which the alrnonds have been fried to the pigeon stuffing and keep the remainder of the oil.