You don't go to Cockneys for silver service. You go for the view and a great plate of pasta

When we tried to locate a decent picture of Cockney’s on our database, we couldn’t find one. So we settled for the view you get when you’re about to get to your table on the terrace. That is, lots of water, Sliema with its matchbox skyline on the other side of Marsamxett Harbour, and the regular chugging ferry service between Sliema and Valletta.

Cockney’s, as the name dictates, has a strong legacy with the British colonial past. The original bar seems to be some illegal shack built against the bastions. The current wooden structure looks equally suspect. But let none of this bother you. You go to Cockney’s when the sun is shining and the water is sparkling, so you can have a table on the terrace – which is the only place to be.

You don’t go to Cockney’s for the art decor on the walls, or the silver service. And yet, Cockney’s is all about location and a real Maltese dining experience by the water. You’ll get some people who moan that their lobster was not well cooked, or that the service was slow or frenzied, or that their white wine wasn’t chilled enough. To enjoy the Cockney’s experience you do the following:

• Book beforehand – the place is almost invariably full, especially when the weather’s good.
• Find some loud friends – they will blend in well with the Maltese families jostling to shout their latest gossip, on the next table.  Don’t take your girlfriend there to impress her or on her first date.  Or your in-laws, unless they’ve been to the place before and have a sense of humour.
• Order the antipasto – we particularly like the vegetarian version, with nicely-grilled aubergines and peppers.
• Order pasta as a main course with whatever choice of seafood takes your fancy.  We particularly like the spaghetti with mussels and vongole.  Yes, the mussels are fresh-frozen and come from New Zealand – but, what the heck, they’re very nice, and blend wonderfully with the mint, and the vongole.  And you get to build a small mountain of shell fish as you chat.
• Wash it down with some dry white wine.
• Skip the sweets (or just grab an ice-cream).  Have a little grappa, or a double espresso.
• Watch the Maltese laugh, yell, tell stories.  Watch the green boat with its little line of patient tourists waiting to cross the water. Nod, even though you may not be listening.

Cockney’s deserves to be on our Food Icons list for being so unfashionably Maltese..  

Cockney’s Bar & Restaurant. Marsamxett Landing Place, Valletta. Tel. +356 21236065

Photo: G Travels

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Unlocking the Secrets of Gozo: the Old Prison, Cittadella, where Grand Master Jean de la Valette was once imprisoned.

I spent last weekend in Gozo. It’s the first time I’ve stayed a night there in years. I’ve always just day tripped, usually taking guests for a quick tour doing the sights like any guide. One of Gozo’s attractions is the chance to stay in an old farmhouse which the island specialises in as accommodation. I live in one in Malta, so I have less urge to island hop for that reason.

But shame on me…

Because over nighting in Gozo is far more than staying in an old stone place. Two days and a night in Gozo give you a totally different perspective on this micro island; one that day trippers can never savour as they rush for the ferry at sundown. Gozo is, quite simply, different – a fact which has caused much sparring between the two inhabited Maltese Islands.

Maltese will often pop to Gozo for both summer and winter weekend breaks, especially at certain times of year such as Carnival in February and the summer shutdown week around the Santa Marija public holiday on 15th August. But day tripping tourists among you might want to linger longer once you’ve scanned my main reasons to stay in and not speed around Gozo.

Slowing down
That Gozo moves at a far slower pace is true. It is a cliche’ in some ways as it always billed as a more rural, quieter sister island to Malta. If you are en masse on a day trip you never quite get to feel the vibe of Gozo. I have to say it took me a whole day to not get wound up by ’slow’ but to come to appreciate it as de-stressing, not stress inducing. It is the place not to take any Wi-Fi device, forget work, escape and just take life around you at face value.

Weird and Wonderful Land and Seacapes
It might be 20 minutes from Malta, but Gozo has a landscape all its own. It is dominated by steep-sided plateau. Some are topped by landmarks – Cittadella just above the chief town, Rabat (Victoria); the Ta’ Giordan Lighthouse or the village of Zebbug with its church rising high and proud. Then you’ve coastlines like that at Dwerja with the Azure Window and Fungus Rock, or the weather worn shapes on the coast at Qbajjer. You can of course rush around in a mini bus and see all in a day. But nothing beats eating out watching their contours change with the onset of dusk and the rise of the moon. If you do stay and eat in the evening when you’re on a day trip, you’re still clock watching for that ferry back to Malta and never quite in a slow enough lane to really enjoy the play of light on the scenery.

Dining Out
Of course you get to eat out on a day trip, but it’s nice to have time to discover somewhere new and pop back to favourite places over a few days in Gozo. On a day trip you are unlikely to discover, for instance, one of Gozo’s food icons, Maxokk’s pizzas in Nadur. There are some weird places to come across too, like the ‘Death Bar’, Tal Mewta, in the street to the right of St George’s church in Rabat. I didn’t see it open this time, but it used to have some old men boozing in it when I last went.

A Gozo insider did a good round up of where to eat in Gozo as the day ebbs and flows. We bumped into him on his regular Sunday walk in Rabat in St George’s Square and he reeled off details of a great value feast he’d had at Beppe’s in Marsalforn, and a Sicilian restaurant in Mgarr. We dined at Otters, also in Marsalforn. It used to be a humble beer and pizza place but has turned into a relaxed wine bar come restaurant since I last visited. It has fantastic seafood, a good wine list and an al fresco (very al fresco in gale force 5 last night) terrace where we watched waves crash below us. Our other find this weekend was Rangers Bar in Gharb. It has to-die-for views from the roof of Ta’ Pinu church and serves homely, hearty portions of family food – pizzas, pasta, fish ‘n’ chips – at amazing value. It’s an unpretentious place that attracts tourist families dining early (like us!). For an unbiased review of Rangers from an overseas visitor, click here.

Doing nothing in particular
Rushing around on a day trip is an anathema to those who’ve discovered Gozo. If you stay over, you can ‘do the sights’, one or two perhaps each morning, then spend the rest of your time doing absolutely nothing that requires brain or brawn. A family I know leave Malta most Friday nights or Saturday mornings for their weekend house in Gozo, returning Sunday evening. They do take computers but say Gozo forces them to have more relaxed quality, family time. They just can’t resist its wind-down feel. If you’re on holiday in Malta, you might think you’re already winding down. But if you aren’t stuck on a package deal, try a night in Gozo and you’ll see what relaxing is all about. Malta will feel so urban and busy when you return.

Gozo's coastline, a snorkeler's paradise.

We’ll do a list of must-sees in Gozo and places to swim in another article. I find the pull of Gozo is to not see much and just relax quite frankly!

Photo: Hondoq ir Rumien, Leslie Vella.

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The Many Faces of Strait Street. ('Museum Night' 70x100cm acrylic on paper)

Strait Street, Valletta, has been getting quite some attention in recent months. Not that its name hasn’t had a certain resonance for well over a century – ask any British ex-servicemen who were stationed in Malta up to the ’60s or so.

Famed, or notorious for its music halls and less salubrious life in Valletta of old, Strait Street is now high on the agenda for rehabilitation and becoming an ‘in’ venue for those who love art, wine and music.

Wine bars and little hole-in-the-wall galleries have emerged along its very narrow thoroughfare, and thrive. By day M&S, that most British of retailers, is open for business in a designer-renovated building and further down, as it dips towards the end of the Valletta peninsula, law firms have lovingly done up patricians’ houses into amazing offices.

And, a couple of months back, we got the new Strait Street public conveniences! Which were talk of the town when they opened.

Riding on the crest of all this interest in the once much maligned Strait Street, this year’s Malta Arts Festival has created an event to celebrate the street. Spaces or Spazji is all about representing visual arts in a way the festival hasn’t captured them in previous editions. Rather than a conventional exhibition, the scope of this year’s project was to find and create a ‘new’ space for the visual arts.

The Art Exhibition
A privately-owned space near the upper end of Strait Street (nearly opposite Trabuxu wine bar has been ‘loaned’ out especially for the occasion and now hosts the works of five independent artists.

In complete contrast to the street’s physical boundaries, the works on show are broad in theme. The artists – Sean Gabriel Ellul, Fabrizio Ellul, Ruth Bianco, Anton Grech and James Micallef Grimaud, selected by curator Lisa Gwen Baldacchino – have been drawn together in the hopes of setting a precedent.

Spaces|spazji runs from July 9 till July 30 at No. 187, Strait Street, Valletta. Opening hours: 10 a.m. till 7 p.m. daily. Entrance: free.

More on Malta Arts Festival.

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Great for cool, zesty lemonade this time of year

I had some friends coming over for a buffet and needed loads of lemons. All those salad dressings to make, and perhaps a cooling zesty lemon mousse for dessert. So, in Malta, where do you go for lemons? The supermarket?

No, you look over the garden wall. Or, more precisely, you lower a basket over the wall, your neighbour generously fills it, you hoist it up, and hey presto, you’ve a surfeit of lemons to make a gallon or more of lemonade, and some left over.

This little ritual of give and take plays out if you don’t conveniently have your own tree that is. Even the smallest front or backyard in a town like Sliema has room for a lemon tree. I have olive, cypress and palms but my ageing lemon died a long time ago. My neighbour’s garden is littered with fallen lemons. Old, knarled, thick-skinned with warty lumps, and slightly mildewed or bird splattered. Fresh from the orchard, in their natural state and free of those boxtoxed-looking waxed skins, they are bliss. A lemon scent and taste to die for.

Yesterday morning, 07.30, I called from my roof across her garden as I’d heard her weeding. Mary picked out the best from her crate of windfalls and obligingly packed my wicker basket full. I pulled it up the 15 foot drop, ever grateful. And I took a moment to reflect on this endearing slice of Maltese village life: the sharing neighbours, the use of produce to the full when in season, and an appreciation of nature’s bounty.

I look at Mary’s large orchard, overshadowed by the parish church, and pray that it will never be built on. Anything is possible in Malta. Long may her lemon trees live on.

What is a ‘basket’ in Malta?
Basket is used in Malta to refer also to a plastic bag, the sort supermarkets dish out (at a price these days). Not to be confused with wicker or reed woven baskets.

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Many's the time you'll eat far better at a Maltese home...

Families are big in the Med. If you live on a small island like this, you have no real excuse not to meet your parents and your siblings. And yet, it’s part and parcel of 21st century life that we are more mobile, busy, dispersed, time-poor, disconnected and have every excuse not to.

All families have a cog. The person who keeps the wheels of the strange, permanent, blood network of the Maltese family in motion – and every so often shouts ‘Lunch!‘ to the other wheels and gets something organised.

In my family, the cog that gets the family assembled around lunch is my sister. ‘Lunch’ is usually the trigger for a pilgrimage to her place – but it can also be an excuse to go out and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, reunions … or to explore “this amazing new place by the water which does a great plate of pasta con rizzi and Dad hasn’t been there yet.” Most Maltese eating-places have long cottoned on to the Sunday family lunch phenomenon, and serve family buffets for everyone from nappy-changing age to Zimmer-frame dotage. If it’s a home affair, the Sunday family lunch can be a long drawn-out affair, with various components contributing to the the starter, main-course and dessert, or a simple barbecue.

I was thinking of the Maltese Sunday lunch cog today, as we prepared to go to Zebbug, for the reunion my sister organised for my brother, an academic in Manchester on a fleeting visit. In my book, the Sunday lunch cog has the following characteristics:

Female
Bohemian
Food-lover
Cooks well
Ambivalent to dish-washing, loud kids, spillages
Loves ‘being round the kitchen table’
Tuned to the latest in social gossip
Always notices when someone has finished a course
A natural organiser

If you are Maltese, you must have a Sunday lunch cog in your family.  What are they like?

Vanilla Panacotta with Strawberry Coulis - just the dessert to round off the family meal

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There's always a different angle to Malta. But many tourists miss its real gems.

This is a selective round-up of some of the more unusual and we hope more interesting pastimes, excursions and tours to think about if you are holidaying in Malta. If you’re coming with a tour operator, the chances are that the rep assigned to your hotel will have regular packages on offer. But what about the things to see that are more off the beaten tourist path? The quirkier, more eclectic museums or the more sensual or adventurous ways to see the Islands?

Here, we hope to give you some ideas about what else is on offer in Malta and Gozo, when the guides, guidebooks and reps’ choices leave you, well, feeling a little like you’ve done and seen the things before (the Balearic Islands perhaps on last year’s hols?!).

Wind, Sea & Sky
Seaplane Trip
A friend of mine took her mum up in the seaplane for a birthday treat. Apart from running the regular hourly shuttle to Gozo and back, the plane also offers scenic flights over Malta. It does recall the glam ‘flying boat’ era of the ’50s even if it’s a thoroughly modern descendent of those planes. What is interesting about seeing Malta from the air is that you discover hidden coves, swathes of walkable countryside and landmarks that you just don’t know about, even if you’ve lived here for years. Places you are eager to seek out later on land. And of course, there’s the thrill of landing on sea, not runway! Contact Harbour Air for details.

Trial Flight
If you are keener to ‘have a go’ and do more than see the scenery, then try one of Malta’s light aircraft flying schools, most of which offer a trial, orientation flight to would-be pilots. Again, like the Seaplane, prices are reasonable, and you do get a go on the joy stick and learn about flying with natural and screen horizons. The instructors are happy to let you treat it as a scenic flight if you prefer! Don’t forget the camera. One school we’ve tested out ourselves is Diamond Flight Training. See our write-up here.

Aviation Museum
Near Ta’ Qali crafts village and right next to the National Stadium is this fascinating aviation museum housed in what were hangers of the old RAF aerodrome. Run as a non-profit organisation, the museum has gone from strength to strength in its work salvaging, acquiring and doing up an eclectic collection of planes and plane bits (mostly World War II era) such as a Hawker Hurricane and a Spitfire as well as having display cases packed with fascinating memorabilia. EU funding secured it a new hanger and the collection, layout, and information are admirable. Kids love it! So do grandads. See its site here.

Sail away
You need to plan this rather than expect to get it sorted when you’re here, but a private hire of sailing boat is an amazing experience, whether you’re out for a day or are more flush for cash and hire it for a three-day trip to Sicily. The tourist boats that start from Sliema ferries are fine for a quick family outing, but if you really want to experience Malta from the sea, you’ll need to sail. Most higher-star hotels with lidos and beach concessions offer sailing instruction, as does Vikings Sailing Club based in Hay Wharf (near the Excelsior Hotel), Valletta. Vikings has three-day (half day) courses in the summer for newbies to the sport. Well worth fitting in if you can and the Valletta bus terminus is conveniently nearby. Other clubs and schools operate too, especially in the St Paul’s Bay area in northern Malta.

Road
Open-top Bus Tours
Malta doesn’t have the space and roads to offer real motoring pleasure while on holiday (nor the road etiquette). There’s little point in hiring a vintage motor (we don’t mean old banger) to cruise the scenery. Leave that to larger countries. But what it does have is its quirky London-style double-decker bus tours. You can sit up top, sun or rain permitting, feel the wind blast your cheeks out of shape and rattle along spying over those rubble walls at a ‘hidden Malta’! Choose the southern or northern Malta tour, and hop on and off at will. Commentary in eight languages. I’ve not tried the tour, but my son wants to next holiday!

Classic Car Museum
If you aren’t getting your fix of old cars on Malta’s road, try out this museum to glimpse some that have had real tender loving care having been restored to near pristine condition. The museum is in one of Malta’ most touristy towns – Qawra – but often gets overlooked. It is privately run, and well kept and has a vast collection, so you can easily pass two or even three hours eyeing up the motors.

Quad Bike Tours
Very popular in Malta over the past five years are quad bikes. I suppose they give a feel of US-style beach riders. Though they are road bound here. The enterprising Malta Quad Bike Association offers all you need to find a tour or jaunt that suits you, from half days in Gozo to tours to Sicily. You need a valid drivers licence and must be over 25 years to take out a quad.

History
Wayside chapels, watch towers and quirky sites
A non-profit heritage organisation that does jolly well in keeping interesting gems of sites and buildings going for the pleasure of visitors is Din L-Art Helwa. We’ve given it several mentions on this site because we feel the places it cares for make interesting, more off-the-beaten tourist path places to visit. Red Fort (mentioned on a walk here), Bir Miftuh, the Wignacourt Tower are all ones we’ve covered. It is now on the verge of completing restoration of the Delimara Lighthouse which will be run also as holiday accommodation. See the organisation’s site for more hidden gems to visit – most are accessible within a short walk of public transport, and all make for an hour’s diversion from the regular tourist fare.

Wine & Food
Winery Tour – Meridiana Wine Estate
If the tour operators tell you only about the crafts village at Ta’ Qali, try to steal away when you’re there to Ta’ Qali’s other business – wine making. Meridiana is a small winery has been going just over 20 years and had start-up know-how from Marchese Piero Antinori, Tuscany’s famed wine lord. The estate produces what is calls ‘world-class wines of Maltese character’, not in great quantities, but all are well worth seeking out in restaurants and wine merchants if you don’t get to make a winery tour and tasting.

Maltese Olive Oil & ancient Olive Trees
The Romans introduced the olive tree to Malta, and it’s been proved in recent years that a few ancient olives growing in Barija, in the North, are around 1,000 years old, and therefore the offspring most likely of those Roman trees. One man, Sammy Cremona, is responsible for reviving this ancient root stock unique to Malta with the help of EU, government, and private sector funding. His own olive farm in Wardija offers tours, tastings and a typical Maltese farmers lunch with all the trimmings. By appointment only and usually run for small groups. His wife Matty is a well-known local cookery expert. Call Sammy Cremona on: +356 79582294. See more on olives here, and about Sammy and the project here.

Photo: Therese Debono

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Soul searching in an Easter passion play at the Carmelite Priory, Mdina

The Carmelite Priory Museum in Mdina, a relatively recent, private museum for Malta, with a ‘pretty nice cafe’ attached, has been using its heritage assets well. Its museum, shop and eatery aside, the Priory is making the most of its vast buildings, spacious corridors, airy courtyard and church as a backdrop to arts and cultural events. It holds regular Wednesday and Saturday lunchtime concerts in its refectory, which make an ideal excuse to escape the busy tourist street outside.

At Easter, the priory is the venue for a passion play with a twist – ‘Is it Me?’ – adapted and directed by the Priory’s manager, Marc Cabourdin, who you’ll usually find overseeing the Old Priory Cafe.

Why a play and why now? Marc explains: “This is the first time we’ve taken such an initiative at the Priory. Easter is a time when many paegants are put up in Malta but most focus upon the sufferings of Jesus. ‘Is It Me?’ is different as it places strong emphasis on the originality of Jesus’s teachings with their underlying message of the importance of love as the centre of all human experience. The radicality of Jesus’s preaching is what led to him being ostracised and to him being accused of blasphemy and then executed. The plot also focuses upon his interaction with the people and gives deeper insight into the roles of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas.”

Earlier in life, Marc spent four years in London as an actor and reading for an MA in acting and theatre, so it’s little wonder that the Priory is taking this turn.

Without giving the play away….”Is it me?”, is an adaptation of the well-known Easter play “Son of Man”, by Dennis Potter, which was originally produced by the BBC for television. It lets you see the choices that had to be made for those events which changed the face of history. The Priory’s adaptation is very much a team effort of all the cast.

Cast: Steffan Cherriet Busuttil, Tyron Grima, Jean Pierre Agius, Joanna Caruana, Justin Fenech, Keith Pavia, David Chircop, and Wesley Ellul.

Further info:
Dates: March 27 – 29, at 20.00.
Time: 8:00pm.
Admission: €10.00, concessions €8.00.
Venue phone: +356 27020404.
email: info@carmelitepriorymuseum.com
Site: www.carmelitepriorymuseum.com

Photo: courtesy of the Priory. Stefan Cheriet Busuttil in the role of Jesus.

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A food tradition that lives on - Maltese honey rings

Two events this week prompt my post about Maltese traditional food. The Malta Standards Authority (MSA) announced it is carrying out a survey over the next two months to ‘clearly establish the eating habits of the Maltese’. Then, my son told me that he needed to dress up like a Maltese villager of yesteryear (flat cap & waistcoat) and serve traditional hobz biz zejt (Maltese bread smeared with tomato paste, olives, onions, tuna and capers) at his end-of-term open day.

The common theme that links the two is a feeling that in Malta we need to return to our roots when it comes to our diet if we are to pass on the dubious honour of our current high rankings in the world’s obesity indices.

Undoubtedly, the Maltese diet has changed drastically in the past 50 years, and now includes all the fast, convenience, additive-laden, pre-packed foods found across the western world. So much for the Mediterranean diet. But, the hobz biz-zejt lives on strongly in snack bars along with qassata and pastizzi (ricotta and pea-filled pastry turnovers) with their interesting blend of healthy filling and carb-laden pastry.

While even the old-style Maltese diet would have included (‘bad’) refined carbs in bread and pasta, it would have been off-set by a larger proportion of fresh fish, meat and vegetables. If you add reasonable amounts of fresh meat or fish to your weekly shop here, the total bill shoots up. We may be surrounded by sea, but its fruits are costly. Perhaps in days gone by, people caught or bred more of the protein themselves and kept the costs down that way.

If there’s one thing we need public health campaigns to do, it’s to show the regular Maltese family how to eat cheaply, cooking fresh meat and fish and leaving out the majority of refined carbs and processed foods. A glance at the list of traditional dishes below, shows that we must have had this knack here once upon a time! As in most of the Mediterranean, meat would have been eked out padded with vegetables and with its juices moped up with crusty bread.

All the recipes below required cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients – that is a good start to eating healthier! Bear in mind, that in the past, the Maltese diet would have included desserts and pastries as a treat on high days, feasts and Sundays only, and not as a regular snack with a cafe pit stop.

Here’s a selection of some traditional recipes, but whether they are cooked at home much? We’ll await the findings of that food diary survey:

Savoury dishes
Lampuki pie – late summer to autumn’s seasonal fish – lampuka (dolphin fish). Also served as shallow fried steaks.
Bragioli – beef olives (thin strips of beef rolled and filled with bacon, bread crumbs, parsley all bound together with an egg), served in red wine and tomato sauce.
Stuffed squid
Octopus stew
Spaghetti with Sea Urchins (Rizzi)
Ricotta Pie – goats cheese and ricotta mixed with some broad beans and parsley on pastry base.
Rabbit stew – with olives, red wine, bay leaves, onion, garlic, tomato puree.
Spinach and Tuna Pie – onion, garlic, anchovy, pastry base, olives, tuna, chopped spinach
Pumpkin soup
Stuffed marrow – mince beef filled marrow rings, baked
‘Widow’s Soup‘ (soppa ta’ l’armla) – this vegetable soup and other minestre are a mainstay of the Maltese kitchen. They are still cooked here big time; I smell various soups or broths in my village street most days.
Bigilla – fava bean paste. A homely dip you find ready-made in supermarkets, and which features also on wine bar menus today.
Timpana – baked macaroni (kind of lasagna using mince beef (sometimes lamb), but with pastry top.
Rice balls (arancini)- chicken or beef mince mixed in with rice to form ball coated in bread crumbs and then deep fried.

Desserts & Pastries
Most desserts and sweets you find in Malta, now as in the past, are directly inherited from our neighbour Sicily. Read about them and their history in our dedicated post on Maltese sweets.
Kannoli – deep-fried sweet pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta, and sometimes candied peel.
Cassata – cakes made with almond paste and filled with sweet ricotta
Mqaret – small packages of sweet pastry filled with a date mixture and served mouth blisteringly hot!

Photo: Peter Grima (Know Malta) – he has the recipe for honey rings here!

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The edible thistle, the globe artichoke, in season aplenty in Malta right now

I have just seen Jamie Oliver’s TED talk video. Love or hate his style, Jamie is just about the only celeb voice consistently banging on about the junk that’s in a lot of kids’ diets these days, whether they’re eating at home, school or on the street. His crusade to get us to feed our kids healthily has now extended to America. His TED talk showed a clip of what looks like five-year olds in class unable to name correctly, or recognise at all, basic fruit and veg like potatoes and tomatoes (let alone an artichoke). Scary stuff. They looked as if they’d never seen a raw ingredient.

A few weeks ago, my son started receiving a portion of fruit or vegetables in a small plastic container, once a week, at school break. The initiative is part sponsored by the European Union. Malta has high child obesity rates ranking pretty much alongside the US rates. The veg in schools initiative is therefore laudable, but has its problems. I saw one of the offerings as he brought it home, part eaten. It was watery lettuce, cucumber and a bland, anaemic tomato. Kids can like salad, but usually it has to appeal to them. This was rabbit food at its worst and I could barely eat it.

The art of veggie shopping in Malta
Having Jamie’s TED talk and my family’s health at the forefront of my mind, I ended up scrutinising more carefully than usual my shopping basket of goods in the supermarket today. I don’t mean I paused over the low-fat, but high-sugar yoghurt (health-con) products, but I made a point of taking a long hard look at the labeling of the fruit and veg. A recipe on my menu plan for the weekend required ’snow peas’ – not in season right now, if ever, in Malta. There were some on display though, cellophane wrapped, and stating that they were from Guatemala.

Far too many food miles to contemplate that purchase. Similarly, though I love pineapple and mango, I gave them a miss too and opted for what’s local, in season, plentiful and therefore cheap. At present, that means strawberries! I usually reckon on strawberry season in March, but with growing under plastic and our exceptionally mild winter, they are in the shops now – and they are huge, sweet and just five, reasonably sized ones can provide a child’s Vitamin C quota for the day (according to nutritionist Natalie Savona. See below).

Pick ‘n’ Mix, Squash ‘n’ Squeeze those veggies
In Malta, a good deal of our fruit and veg comes loose, definitely on the veggie carts, and even in supermarkets. That’s a good start to cooking from scratch with raw ingredients. The loose goods are generally local if they are common fruit and veg – or from Sicily.

You can of course get most things, like those snow peas, from anywhere in the world, but why bother? Only around three per cent of Malta’s population is in agriculture, but they work hard and eke out a fairly good spread of raw ingredients. Broccoli, spinach and artichokes are some tempting veg that is in season at the moment. I know that the impoverished soil here might mean that some farmers spray a lot of chemicals around, but who knows what is on most of the imported fruit and veg, unless is says ‘organic’, which itself has been in dispute as the manna from heaven. Wash, scrub and peel things, I say, when in doubt.

Like most canny shoppers in continental Europe, the Maltese housewife (and I use that term because many women do describe themselves here as that) touches and squeezes the produce and digs deep the in plastic tray to find the best of the tomatoes or whatever. There’s a lot of pecking and picking over goods, and the barging aside of other shoppers (as I witness on my local veggie cart days). The economical shoppers go out of their way to ask for any veg that’s almost past its best. I often see people buy a load of wilting this or that to pop in a ‘brodo’ or stew. These are people who use every last sad veg from the bottom of the fridge, and why not? In these times, we have a thing or two to learn from them.

Maltese-descent Celeb Nutritionists
As an afterword, it’s worth noting that the Islands have two Maltese-descent UK celebrity nutrionists to their name. Natalie Savona, an academic and practitioner who has written for and broadcasted extensively in national UK media; and Dr John Briffa who had a long-running column in the UK Observer and has an active blog.

Now, I’m off to work out how to dissect those massive globe artichokes I bought on whim, and see if I can learn what to do with them! They were going like hot cakes on the veg cart yesterday. Damn, I should have called upon the collective wisdom of my fellow ‘housewife’ shoppers to ask their advice…

Related Posts
Cost of Living: Food shopping in Malta
How to shop at the village veggie store
Pumpkin: not just for Halloween
Strawberry Fair

Photo: James

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Not child's artwork, but messy, gooey, gorgeous prinjolata carnival cake

This is a cake designed to appeal to kids, or the kid in us adults. While Christmas cakes are ice-rink smooth perfection, the prinjolata, which starts appearing in cafés and confectioners in late January and therefore well before carnival, is a mound of mess. Splattered with melted chocolate, pine nuts and glacé cherries glowing neon artificial green and red, the prinjolata is like a kids’ art session crossed with a Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake.

Its name comes from prinjol, pine nut, which is similar to the Italian word, pinoli. But pine nuts seem to be just a bit of decoration. The cake itself, which can be a counter-top mountain (as in the St James’ Cavalier café), is made of cream, sponge, citrus peel and biscuits. It has a substantial calorie count with its condensed milk and a bit of a boozy bite to it with its Vermouth content.

My son drools when he sees it. I have to say my stomach turns at its grotesque carnival appearance. But I do admit that it is the epitomé of pre-Lent excess and puts the Protestant Shrove Tuesday pancake in the shade. The prinjolata certainly does use up any fattening ingredients that might be in the store cupboard.

If you feel like giving it a go at home, this seems a good recipe source for it. Decorating it could make for a fun mid-term activity with the kids. If you fancy tasting it, cafés sell it by the slice, and some places have smaller, almost individual-sized plated domes of it for sale. You’ll need a sweet tooth to enjoy it; seeing it is the greater pleasure I think.

Photo: Peter Grima [Know Malta]

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