Having nothing much to do of an evening under lockdown, I found a shoeboxful of family photos of sunny days in southern Spain, when I lived with my young family in a remote valley in Andalucia.
Spain hadn’t yet joined a fledgeling EU, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was in power, the consquences of a bloody civil war were still in people’s minds, and the valley was slap in the middle of a zona militar - a militarised zone, complete with concrete look-out posts, that stretched from the prosperous merchant port of Algeciras (supporters of the General) and Tarifa (a sometime Moorish stronghold that favoured dissidents of all stripes).
As foreign residents we needed to get our collective passports stamped once every ninety days (then as now, post-Brexit). Unfortunately the land-frontier with Gibraltar - a sticky-up lump of rock bought for the British Crown in was intermittently closed without notice depending on the mood in Madrid, trapping workers from the nearby town of La Linea and residents of the Costa del Sol in search of Marmite, a reliable Scottish kipper and one-kilo tins of caviar traded by Russian sailors in exchange for favours from the ladies of the town.. The Rock’s garrison (at the time, members of the Black Watch, fully-kilted) amused itself by blowing up small portions of no-man’s land after placing a hand-written notice with “Beware Explosion” between the two frontier posts.
So we took to catching the ferry from Algeciras, where the children went to school, to Tangier just across the Straights, returning within the day. Tangier was - still is - a free port, safe-haven for folks who’d be in trouble anywhere else, where little clay pipes for smoking marijuana were sold together with the dried herb, or you could buy a wedge of hashish-spiked majoon, a gritty fudge-like preparation that . beautiful round-bellied unglazed earthenware cooking pots, shimmering skeins of silks, embroideries sold by the Blue Men who came in from the desert with their foreheads dyed indigo from the wrappings they wore on their heads, embroidered tentings, beaten-tin lanterns, cushion-covers stitched with little scaps of mirror, leather-work, hand-woven rugs.
All in all, very unsuitable territory for a young mother with four small children in tow and no husband or brother in sight. So as soon we landed, we’d pick a street urchin as our guide and protector for the day (a bargain), and spend the morning wandering the alleyways of the souk, a warren of shops and stalls that ascended the hill behind the harbour. I still have the beautiful Berber wedding dress I bought on one of those trips to remind me of that life…
Here, among the scented bundles of mint and leaf-coriander (herbs not used for flavouring in Andalucia), we’d buy spices from great open sacks, dried leaves, rosebuds, saffron, rice, couscous, beans, a scoop of fiery harissa. Sometimes we’d stop for a taste of a honey-soaked almond pastry with its little glass of water, a sip of mint tea prepared to a slow ritual which cannot be hurried or interrupted.
In a crowded port-city such as Tangier, life is lived in the street, and the midday meal is often taken outside the home. So at the end of the morning there was always something good to eat in one of the little restaurants tucked away behind a bead curtain - maybe tagine with fresh fish from the Straights, or, as a special treat, a square of bistilla, a sweet-savoury double-crust pie.
In the covered market we could watch the man who prepared ouaka, a fine filo-like pastry made not by stretching and rolling, but by dabbing a little ball of dough onto domed bakestone so that all the blobs join together seamlessly to make a gossamer-fine pancake. And if we were lucky, there might be a woman preparing a batch of couscous, a lengthy process that involves rubbing tiny grains of prepared semolina through a horse-hair sieve. Pre-cooking - part of the processing of what is, to all intents and purposes, is a diminutive pasta. This initial preparation allowed a perishable grainfood that’s inconviently prone to sprouting under damp conditions, to be transported across the Mediterranean to the hungry citizens of Imperial Rome. Evidence of the Roman colonial presence is everywhere, particularly in beautiful floor-mosaics at the Volubilis.
For the full glory of the how, what, why and wherefore, please consult Paula Wolfert’s magesterial “Couscous and Other Good Things from Morocco”.
Bistilla
No royal banquet could be considered complete without this a stupendous layering of buttery, paper-thin pastry traditionally filled with young pigeon (squab) left unboned, baked flat on a griddle and turned to cook the other side, a delicate process much like turning a Spanish tortilla in the pan. The following recipe wouldn’t pass muster at the King's table in Rabat, but has the virtue of not requiring the attentions of an army of palace servants.
Serves 8-10, delicately
The filling
Either 6 plump young pigeons (squab) or 2 small free-range chickens, jointed
1k onions, finely chopped
6 tblspns finely chopped parsley
8 medium eggs, forked to blend
1 tblspn clarified butter
250g blanched almonds
2 tblspns castor sugar
Salt and pepper
The pastry
Either 12 prepared sheets of ouaka or 1 pkt filo pastry
Melted butter for brushing (plenty)
Icing sugar and powdered cinnamon to finish
Poach the jointed birds till tender in enough water to cover with the usual pot-herbs - onion, carrot, bay, peppercorns, salt - plus a short stick of cinnamon. Allow 30-40 minutes. Drain, cool, skin and de-bone (authentically, the birds remain whole). Reserve the meat, along with the strained stock.
Pre-heat the oven to 180F/350C/Gas4.
Simmer the onion and parsley in a ladleful of the stock till tender - about 10 minutes - and reserve. Meanwhile, keeping back a spoonful of egg for brushing, scramble the eggs lightly with the butter and a spoonful of the stock - season with salt, pepper and cinnamon, and reserve.
Crush the almonds with the sugar, and reserve.
To assemble the pie: brush a 30cm baking tin with melted butter and line with 1 or 2 layers of pastry (depending on if you’re using ouaca or filo), allowing a generous overlap round the edge. Brush with more butter and top with another sheet of pastry. Repeat till you have 8 layers. Brush with raw egg and spread with a layer of scrambled egg, then onion, then almonds, then all the meat. Repeat in reverse order, finishing with almonds. Lay a double thickness of pastry over the filling, brush with egg, and fold over the flaps to make a large, fat pancake.
Bake for 20 minutes. Reverse the pie onto a plate and slip it back into the tin, so the base is uppermost. Bake for a further 10-15 minutes, until the top is deliciously crisp and brown. Decorate with cinnamon and icing sugar in a pretty criss-cross pattern. Each guest eats the portion immediately in front of them, very daintily with hands washed in rose-water, using the first three fingers of the right hand only.
Paula Wolfert certainly covers the cuisine in scholarly detail !
G
Love this post. The story, the water colors and the recipe. I made a lamb Tangine a few years back but the fish Tangine sounds lovely.