It could be mistaken for one of the hottest culinary concepts of our time, enshrined à la Fat Duck or El Bulli in cutting-edge gastronomic whimsies like sardine-on-toast sorbet, seaweed nougat or white chocolate and caviar; even high-class pastry chefs are getting in on the act with dessert menus full of things like chocolate mousse bathed in olive oil and fleur de sel. These days, the dishes top chefs seem to get maximum mileage from are those that taunt our minds and thwart our expectations, playfully rearranging our preconceptions of good taste as we experience sweet and savory together in ever more daring forms. Now I'm no psychologist, and admittedly my exposure to cutting-edge cuisine is limited, but even so another possibility occurs to me. It seems to me perfectly plausible that the reason this particular combination of flavors manages to succeed so well on big-league menus is not a result of the novelty, surprise or confusion they elicit, but rather because of their effect on a completely different region of the head: simply put, sweet and savory just taste good together.

You don't have to look far to find that many cuisines value the interplay of sweet and savory elements. Some seem to court love affairs with the combination but restrict its appearance to a few choice staples - just look at the American penchant for ketchup, baked beans, and sticky barbecue, or the British love of Branston sandwich pickle and Colemans mint sauce. For others, eating this way conforms to a long-established tradition. In much of Southeast Asia, and Thailand in particular, a dish of perfect proportions is said to encompass the four essential tastes, namely sweet, sour, salty and spicy, while in Indian Ayurveda, there are six (sweet, salty, sour, astringent, bitter, and pungent) believed to create harmony in the body and spirit. The idea of balancing opposing tastes is a fundamental of Zoroastrian belief as well, which is why modern Persian cuisine boasts so many sweet and savory delights. Among all the cultures that venerate this particular taste dynamic, however, to my mind none can compete with Morocco, where some of the most innovative and delicious sweet and savory cuisine in the world finds its home.

Moroccan cuisine is justifiably hailed as the most sophisticated in all of Africa. Despite its peripheral location on the northwest coast of the continent, it has been shaped by centuries of invasion, colonization and cross-migration between Europe and the Middle East, all of which has left a unique and profound culinary legacy. There are elements from the indigenous Berbers, the conquering Arabs, the colonizing Europeans, and the Moors, who fled from Spain at the time of the Inquisition, bringing back with them the myriad flavors of Iberia. You'll find oranges, almonds, saffron and peppers rubbing shoulders with ginger, cumin, quinces, cilantro and dates; you'll find decadent, mind-blowingly opulent feasts (often encompassing up to twenty different courses), a world-famous tradition of hospitality and a culture of kitchen artistry where secret recipes are passed down from generation to generation like priceless family treasures. And though you'll find fierce regionalism and a loyalty to the particular foodways of one's home soil, it seems that just about anyone you ask will agree on what the true crown jewel of Moroccan cuisine is: a flaky, sugar-dusted meat pastry called bisteeya.

Paula Wolfert has some very interesting theories on the origin of bisteeya (also commonly - and confusingly - written b'steeya, b'stilla, pastilla, or any variation therein). Rejecting the theory that it came back with the Moors when they left Spain in the fifteenth century (which is what current wisdom holds, pointing out the similarity of bisteeya to the Spanish word for pastry, pastel), she believes it stems from an old Berber word for a dish of chicken cooked in saffron, bestila, to which a pastry innovation from the Chinese was applied. Moroccan warka pastry, she claims, instead of emerging as a variation on other European thin pastry such as filo or strudel, made its way to Morocco from China via Persian and Arab traders. She may have a point there as unlike European pastry, which is always rolled, warka is more pancake-like, made by dabbing a ball of wet dough over a hot griddle until a thin sheet can be peeled off, much the same as Chinese spring roll wrappers. The idea that these disparate techniques met on Moroccan soil for the first time seems perfectly logical to me - after all, nowhere else in the world, and particularly not in Spain, will you find anything remotely resembling bisteeya.

Whatever its exact origins, bisteeya is an extravagant and magical dish, almost as much an event as it is sustenance. Imagine crisp, gossamer-thin pastry encasing layers of spiced chicken, lemony eggs, tangy onion sauce and butter-fried almonds, baked until golden and then liberally dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Though the combination may sound peculiar, the taste is anything but - a single bite encompasses everything from spicy to herbal, sour to pungent, nutty to creamy, salty to sweet. While it is traditionally eaten as a first course of a large celebration meal, a huge communal pastry laid out for everyone to tear into with their fingers, it is hearty and filling enough to serve as the pièce de résistance of a considerably smaller affair. But whether you serve it as part of a no-holds-barred feast or a simple dinner with mint tea and a salad, it is a truly spectacular dish, and one I daresay would beat the pants off all the sardine sorbet in the world.