Seffa Medfouna

Seffa Medfouna — 'the buried seffa' — is a festive Moroccan dish whose drama is in the reveal: a dome of sweetened steamed vermicelli, dusted with cinnamon, sugar and ground almonds, is brought to the table, and only when the host parts the noodles does the savory saffron chicken or lamb appear, buried inside. It grows out of Morocco's deep Arab-Berber tradition of steamed grain and pasta dishes, and remains a centerpiece of weddings and meals for honored guests. The technique of steaming the vermicelli several times — the Moroccan method borrowed from couscous — gives it a lightness that plain boiling never would.

The vermicelli is sweet, buttery and softly fragrant with cinnamon; then you reach the buried chicken, which is savory, tender and steeped in saffron-onion broth. The sweet-to-savory transition in the same mouthful is the whole point.

The three-steam method is the defining technique and it comes straight from couscous cookery: the vermicelli is steamed, tossed with oil, steamed again, and steamed a third time with butter and sugar, each pass hydrating it more thoroughly and evenly than boiling would, so the strands stay separate and fluffy rather than clumping. The buried chicken is cooked first in its saffron-onion broth, then mounded with the vermicelli around it; the meat's savory steam rises into the sweet noodles during the final steam, which is why the noodles carry a faint savory undernote. The cinnamon-sugar-almond crown is both garnish and flavor — the diner mixes the sweet top into the savory middle at the table.