Let the Baking begin....Maltese Style

So tonight the 6th season of the Great British Bake-off begins. Bakeoff is a marvellous show, made great by its hosts: the comedy duo of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, the baking master Paul Hollywood (and I'm totally convinced he changed his name because no one's surname is *that* awesome) and finally, the top notch Mary Berry (again, surname...this one rhymes!!). Every year I look forward to seeing this foursome get their wit on, wait anxiously for the raised eyebrows when, ironically, the bakes fail to rise, and giggle at every mention of Mary's soggy bottom. Great stuff, and I don't even like cake!

This year, boyfriend has set up some sort of bake-off competition with his workmates. This is apparently akin to their traditional Football World Cup stakes, but instead of betting money on footballers, they bet cakes on bakers. In other words, if the baker you bet on gets kicked out of the competition, you have to take a home-made baked goody into work. Smashing! Of course, since boyfriend can't bake, he has promised my culinary skills as the consolation prize, but has at least promised to lick the bowl.

The only flaw as far as I can see, is that whoever bets on the winner *does not* need to bring in a cake. Which, frankly, makes no sense, because he who picks a winner can bake cake.

I thought about setting up the same competition at my place of work, but decided there was nothing in it for me given my loathing of sweet goods. Honestly, why eat cake when you can eat bread? Or sausages? Makes sense in my head. So I've decided that instead I will be making an effort to bake something savoury every weekend that Bakeoff is on, and post about it. I'm hoping that watching Bakeoff will inspire me to do this - after all I got that amazing recipe for harissa, goat's cheese and olive plaited loaf from last year's competition, and it went down a treat. Several times :D

Literally the best bread ever

So stay tuned folks, for the many culinary delights to come, interspersed with my favourite quotes from this year's competition. Maybe I'll translate them into Maltese. Or maybe I'll just wax lyrical about Paul H's dreamy blue eyes. Wait and see!

A Mexican twist on a Maltese Favourite

Something that every little Maltese girl is likely to tell you, is that her Nanna (grandmother) makes the world's best Ross Fil-Forn (Maltese for baked rice). This was certainly true for me - my grandmother makes the tastiest, most moist and cheesiest baked rice I've ever eaten. And although Baked Rice was one of the first Maltese dishes that I learnt how to cook when I started university, I've never been able to get anywhere close to replicating Nanna's ability. And even now, I'm put off making this super tasty dish because boyfriend complains about it being boring and rather tasteless. Not something someone who has slaved away in the kitchen all day likes hearing.

So recently I decided that I felt like making Baked Rice but, with these thoughts in mind, I also decided that it needed a distinctly flavourful twist to it. And that's when I came up with the idea of creating a Mexican-style chilli con carne Baked Rice. All the greatness of Maltese cooking, with a spicy Mexican twist.

The recipe below describes how I made this but, if you don't want to follow the Mexican route, you can make the Maltese version of this by simply not putting any of the Chilli spices into the original sauce. But to all you Maltese out there, I definitely recommend giving it a try. It comes delicious!

A Myriad of Spices 

Chilli con Ross Fil-Forn

(see what I did there?)

Chilli con carne sauce:

minced beef

onion

garlic

HP sauce

chocolate powder

mixed herbs

paprika

cayenne pepper

cumin

turmeric

Cinammon & Cayenne Pepper - a miracle combo

ground cinnamon

carrots

kidney beans

chopped tomatoes

chilli peppers

Other ingredients:

white rice

two eggs

grated cheese (cheddar will do)

Method

First make the chilli sauce. Add chopped onions to a hot saucepan with oil in it, and sauté until soft. Add garlic, chilli peppers and then minced beef, stirring until all the mince is browned. Add about a tablespoon of all the spices (a bit less in terms of turmeric and cinnamon). Also add a table spoon of chocolate powder (just do it! trust me!) and a squirt of brown sauce.

Onions, garlic and chillis - the most delightful smell

Mix these all together, then add the carrots and chopped tomatoes. Mix and bring to a boil before letting it simmer for a while. This would be a good point to give it a taste and see if any further spices are needed (I like my chilli to have a powerful depth). Add some seasoning, the kidney beans, stir and allow to cool.

Chilli sauce completed!

While the sauce is cooling, put the rice in a deep baking dish. Add the eggs and whisk, making sure they are fully integrated with the rice. This is important, as the egg causes the dish to solidify, rather than remaining a soggy mess of chilli sauce and rice. 

Rice, with a dash of cinnamon

Rice mixed with egg

After the egg has been mixed in, add some cold water to the dish. This is needed for the rice to cook properly and prevent the dish from drying up.

Looks a bit weird at this point, but needs be done

Finally, add the chilli con carne sauce to the mix, and stir until properly combined. Then grate half the cheese over the dish, stir it in, then grate the rest of the cheese over the top. This is now ready to go in the oven at about 180 degrees celsius.

Sauce all added - beginning to look more consumable!

Pre-oven

After about half an hour, it is recommended that you get the dish out and stir it through again to mix the heat around. It should be solidifying by this point but you should still be able to stir it fairly easily. Leave it in for about an hour total and then allow it to cool slightly before serving up. And trust me, it will be worth the wait!

And after this, boyfriend has never complained about my Ross Fil-Forn again!

An hour later, golden and delicious

Bon Appetito!

A Review of Maltese Cooking II

So picking up where I left off the other day with a bit more insight into traditional Maltese cuisine: fish. I love going to the fish market in the fishing village of Marsaxlokk early on a Sunday morning, and picking up some beautiful super fresh fish for dinner. You have to know what to pick out, but you're usually safe with fish that you know is Mediterranean. I love finding beautiful, thick cut tuna steaks, and cooking them on the BBQ with nothing but a little brush of olive oil. But if you really want to go the traditional Maltese way, you'd pick up a lovely fish called the Dolphin fish, or lampuka and turn it into lampuki pie. I'll get round to putting a recipe for that on this blog at some point in the future.

fresh lampuki

lampuki pie

And of course there's plenty of other fish that you can pick up super fresh from the market. They are always salt-water fish, because as you all know, the Mediterranean is filled with salty sea water, and we have no rivers or lakes in Malta to pick up fresh-water fish. Here's a great list of all the fish that can be found in the Mediterranean, including their English and Maltese names. Cerna (or grouper) makes for a handsome meal, and Dentici (Dentex) and Dott (Wreckfish) are also popular with the Maltese. BBQ them, fry them, bake them, make Aljotta (fish soup) - we do it all! Yum!!

Let's move on from fish. One very popular thing in Malta is the alternative to the chippy. We call it the pastizzeria and no, it absolutely does not sell fish and chips. It sells Maltese baked and fried savoury pastries and other snacky items. They're very cheap. They're totes delicious. And some of them have more calories than you can imagine!!

So what are pastizzi? Image cornish pasties, but oval or triangular shape, made of filo pastry, and filled either with mushy peas (pastizzi tal-pizelli) or ricotta cheese (pastizzi tal-irkotta). They are extremely popular in Malta, and amazingly delicious. And they only cost about 20 cents each!! The downside is they are both addictive and high in calories so you need to steer clear of them when on a diet.

pastizzi

Other items obtainable from the pastizzeria include square slices of pizza, usually either margherita or with tuna and olive toppings. They have little trays of imqarrun or ross fil-forn (see my previous blog post for a description of these). They've also got more traditional items, such as little pies, sausage rolls and other such items that you find in Greggs here in the UK. But pastizzi are certainly their top sellers.

The local pastizzeria

I've given a pretty hefty overview of some favourite tasties in Malta now, but of course I've barely made a dent, as Maltese food has so many varieties and flavours that it would be impossible to cover them all.  However, I would class any meal as a Maltese or Mediterranean dish as long as it has most of the following characteristics:

-tomato based

-fresh meat or veg as the main ingredient

-high in flavour, with herbs, olives, capers, garlic and good quality olive oil contributing highly

Further examples of such dishes are the Maltese Kapunata (essentially a ratatouille) and Soppa ta l-Armla (Widow's Soup), filled with the delicious Maltese cheese gbejna. I promise to present the recipe for this one very soon!

Which brings us to the end of my whirlwind tour of Maltese food. Next time, I'll start talking about how I bring my Maltese personality into the British kitchen, to make the most delicious meals I can imagine.

A Review of Maltese Cooking

Before I start overwhelming you all with my delicious sounding and ever so unusual Malt-British recipes, I thought I'd give a quick overview of the typical kinds of foods found in a Maltese kitchen, and in Malta in general. Some of these dishes may sound quite typically Italian, and some may have a more Moroccan or Arabic twist, and some may just sound weird, but trust me - they're all delicious.

When thinking about Maltese food, I always begin with Maltese bread, or hobza Maltija. Although 'normal' white bread can be bought in Malta, we prefer our traditional bakers and the uber fresh bread that we get from them., often still warm. Maltese hobza is a sourdough, which means that each baker has a unique flavour associated with their bread. The bread is extremely crusty, and comes in two main varieties: one which can be cut into slices and the other which is known as ftira and is used to make the unique Maltese sandwiches. Both types are absolutely delicious, and I have no doubt that many of the chunkier Maltese locals will attribute their weight to the copious amounts of hobza that they have eaten before, during and after their meals all their lives.

From hobza we naturally move onto hobz biz-zejt (hob-zz biz zeyt) which translates literally into bread with oil. But it is so much more than that. We like to make up a mixture of stuff that we place into the bread, usually a combination of kunserva (tomato paste), fresh chopped tomatoes, capers, olives, salt, pepper, copious amounts of olive oil and sometimes canned tuna. Everyone has their own version of this mixture (or tahlita) and it is the most divine thing you can imagine. Give it a go - I had hobz biz-zejt for lunch every day of my childhood, and I would still if I could get my hands on some fresh hobza on a daily basis.

My own version of Hobz biz-zejt

All this talk of hobz biz-zejt is making me salivate so it's time to move on. Next I'm going to describe a traditional Maltese fenkata, which means rabbit feast. This is a very traditional local way of eating that goes back years, and it's so much fun to go out to restaurants in some of the small villages with a big family or a group of friends, and stuff yourself in this way.

At the beginning of a fenkata, you start with olives, hobz biz-zejt, more fresh bread, and bebbux (beb-boosh), which are snails cooked in garlic and butter. Yes, snails. Divine. Freakin' love them!! After this we move onto the starter, which is always pasta. You can either have spaghetti or ravioli filled with ricotta, traditionally served in a rabbit sauce. Then, in case you're not already full, the main course comes out.

The main course is obviously rabbit, and this can be cooked in two ways: as a stew or fried in garlic. The latter is, of course, my favourite way, and it is so flavoursome. You can't be a lady when eating rabbit, because there's lots of bones (and the head for the strong of heart), but it is so tasty that it's worth dripping rabbit juice down your fingers. The rabbit is served with thick-cut Maltese chips, and that's it!! No nasty vegetables at a fenkata - there simply isn't space to fit any in!

Rabbit stew

Finally, to finish the evening, they bring out peanuts in their shells (karawett) and helwa tat-tork (sugary mixture of crushed almonds). Some people even have space for mqaret (minced dates in pastry) with ice cream, but I certainly never do. By then, you've drunk the rest of the wine or beer (Maltese cisk is a local lager and I recommend you try it - yum!) and it's time to roll yourself home!

If rabbit isn't for you, there are plenty of other options to eat at a fenkata. You could have something relatively low key (they always serve chicken as an option), or you could go for another old favourite: horse stew!! Not easy to find, but there are a few select places on the island where they serve this up, and it is sooooo good!!

Fried rabbit, with lots of garlic

Let's move onto something a little less unusual. The Maltese don't actually dine on rabbit super regularly, so we do have a few more normal dishes. Baked rice (ross fil-forn) and baked pasta (imqarrun) are two very popular dishes, especially with children. I won't describe them in more detail here, since I will certainly be cooking them in the near future and will give the recipes in future blog posts. But *spoiler*: they are nothing like the rice/pasta bakes found in the UK!

imqarrun

Now, what kind of Mediterranean cuisine would be complete without fish and seafood. The Maltese bring in plenty of local, fresh fish all the time, and there is quite the appetite for prawns, calamari and octopus. I can't think of any specifically Maltese way of presenting these, although spaghetti with an octopus sauce is a firm favourite, but you can bet that fresh tomatoes, capers, olive oil and the like are commons ingredients served with the fish.

I'm going to bring this blog post to an end now, as I don't want to drive you all to a madness beyond control, caused by the description of all this tasty food. Go away, make yourself some hobz biz-zejt, and come back tomorrow for a description of Maltese fast food (unlike anything found elsewhere), and some Maltese desserts. I'll also tell you about some popular veggie dishes which draw influence from many countries, but all with the standard Maltese twist.

A Grand New Beginning....In the Kitchen

So here it goes....blog number 2. Those of you who have been avidly reading my other blog: Je t'aime le Chicken, will know all about me and the crazy stuff I like to talk about: holidays, cooking, life in London and previously in Preston. For those of you who have never heard of me but have stumbled across this because they happened to google 'Maltese' and ' cooking', or something along those lines, well, here's a brief intro.

By the way, those who have read my other blog might also like to read this quick intro. Just because.

If asked to describe myself in three words, the answer is easy. I am Maltese, I am an astrophysicist and I am a child in an adult's body. Ok, more than three words. But close enough. The first descriptor is the most important, the second the most interesting (see my other blog or my website if you're curious) and the last (phrase) the most obvious when you first meet me.

So, why have I started a new blog about cooking? Probably because when I started university in the UK over eight years ago I couldn't cook anything more exciting than a pot noodle (and I totes lived on those) and now most people I know will describe my food as being exciting, tasty and, most importantly, containing a great Maltese twist. Maltese food, and Mediterranean food in general, contain all my favourite aspects of good cooking: it can be healthy (but not necessarily so), it's mega flavoursome and it's so easy to do.

And to really sum up the reasons for this blog: I want to encourage Maltese people who have left the island to maintain the part of their heritage and culture that deals with food, and I want to give the opportunity for non-Maltese people to cook their own versions of tasty Maltese treats.

Also, in case you were wondering whether this blog would be all about how to make home-made pastizzi (pea cakes) and mqaret (fig desserts), well, think again. This is about how a chef brings the flavours of Malta to her (his) kitchen, not about spending hours filling and baking filo pastry with a delicious pea mixture. You want pastizzi?? I know a place in London. Just not my kitchen.

Mqaret

Pastizzi

Last, but not least, here's a picture of my home. Malta. It's in the Mediterranean. And it's awesome!!