What to eat Malta? culinary specialties and gastronomy

As in the rest of the Mediterranean, we start the meal with a few appetizers. These include żebbuġ mimli (green olives stuffed with tuna), fażola bajda bit-tewm u t-tursin (a white bean salad with parsley), bigilla (a garlicky white bean puree flavored with chili and olive oil), served with galletti (salted crackers). Snails(bebbux) are popular, seasoned with herbs, garlic, tomatoes and capers. Also worth mentioning is the famous ġbejna cheese, made from goat's and sheep's milk. It's a Gozo specialty, both fresh and dried, peppered or with olive oil.

Soups play an important role in the island's cuisine. The unmissable kusksu is a bean soup with onions, tomatoes, ġbejna and tiny pasta also called "kusku" similar to couscous seeds, a legacy of the Arab presence on the island. The classic minestra is a soup of fresh and dried vegetables, while soppa ta'l-armla (nicknamed "widows' soup" for its reasonable cost) consists of simmered vegetables topped with a ġbejna and a poached egg. Kawlata, a winter soup, is made with pork and cabbage. Finally,aljotta is a fish soup flavored with tomato, garlic and lemon.

Stews and stuffed dishes dominate Maltese gastronomy. These include rabbit stew(fenkata), simmered with the inevitable garlic-herb-tomato trio. Fenek moqli is a rabbit recipe where the meat is marinated in red wine, then fried with garlic and simmered in its own marinade. Spaghetti is often served in the rabbit sauce before eating the meat. Also worth mentioning are braġjoli, a beef roll stuffed with a mince of meat, eggs, bread and parsley, and zalzett tal-malti, a pork sausage with herbs. Finally, haruf il-forn, the traditional Sunday dish, consists of baked lamb with potatoes, onions and garlic.

There are also a number of fish and seafood recipes, such as klamari mimlija (squid stuffed with pork) or stuffat-tal-qarnit, an octopus stew with tomatoes and red wine. Served with pasta. Lampuki is a Maltese coastal fish sometimes referred to as sea bream. It is served with a spicy tomato, caper and olive oil sauce. Torta tal-lampuki is a tasty pie made with lampuki, spinach, cauliflower, walnuts and raisins.

On the vegetable side, kapunata is a Maltese ratatouille made with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and garlic. There are also many recipes for stuffed vegetables, such as stuffed artichokes(qacocc mimli) garnished with anchovies, olives and parsley. Bżar mimli (peppers) or brungiel mimli (eggplants) are stuffed with pork and gratinated with cheese.

Only a few hundred kilometers separate Malta from the Sicilian coast, and pasta recipes are very popular. One example is timpana, a kind of macaroni pie with minced meat, tomatoes, grated cheese and eggs. Very nourishing.Imqarrun il-forn is quite similar to timpana, but in the form of a gratin. There's also a delicious version with rice(ross il-forn). Maltese ravioli(ravjul) are usually filled with ricotta and parsley, and topped with a tomato sauce.

A wide range of savoury pastries are available, including the unmissable pastizzi. These turnovers filled with ricotta cheese - more rarely with peas or meat - are very inexpensive. The Maltese are uncompromising about the quality of their pastizzi, which are generally crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. More surprisingly, qassata is a purse-shaped turnover filled with potato, spinach and codfish. Or try torta ta'l-irkotta u spinaci, a spinach and ricotta pie, or torta tal-qargħa ħamra, with pumpkin and rice. There are several types of bread, such as hobza, a traditional round loaf used in the preparation of hobz biz-zejt, a kind of bruschetta topped with tomato, parsley, white beans, capers and anchovies. A similar filling is used for ftira, a Gozo specialty that comes in both pizza and sandwich form.

Sweet treats include kannoli, tubes of crisp dough filled with ricotta cream with orange peel, chocolate shavings, pistachio or even spread, as well as mqaret, a cookie filled with date paste. Another popular cookie is biskuttini tal-lewz, an almond macaroon. The ħelwa tat-Tork is a nougat flavored with tahini (sesame paste), almonds and pistachios.

Prepared at Christmas, qaghaq tal-ghasel is a ring-shaped cookie filled with molasses, cinnamon, aniseed and citrus peel. Reserved for Easter, figolli are iced sugar cookies filled with marzipan. A carnival emblem, prinjolata is a dessert made with a dome of sponge cake and pine nut cream, topped with a creamy meringue and sprinkled with candied fruit and chocolate shavings. There are also tarts such as torti tat-tamal (date purée and cocoa) and torti tal-marmorat (almonds and chocolate). Coffee and tea are both very popular in Malta.

As for beer, Cisk (pronounced "chisk"), the national brand, does very well. The same brewery also produces kinnie, a fizzy drink with bitter orange peel and aromatic herbs. And let's not forget the prickly pear and honey liqueur (bajtra) or the herbal liqueur (madliena).

The island has a long tradition of winemaking. Although the Phoenicians and Romans were the first to grow grapes here, viticulture fell into disuse during the Arab occupation, and was revived with the installation of the Knights of St. John. Delicata and Marsovin are the leading brands, using a wide variety of grape varieties ( gellewza for reds, ghirghentina for whites) to diversify their production. On Gozo, you'll find the La Cittadella winery, whose wines are made exclusively with grapes grown on the island. Of particular interest are Delicata's ta-pinu , rustico bianco and the entire Cittadella range.