After all, Malta may have its flaws. In Sliema, it is today rumoured that the garbage collection service is on strike. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they pick up the mounds of refuse bags that have been lying in the streets for days now? Are they on shutdown? We don’t know. The council never said anything. The garbage collection company did not issue any press releases to the media either. Meanwhile, we’re bang on in the middle of peak season, and tourists are trying to find their way to the beach through mounds of refuse. Luckily, the complex I’m in has an enclosed refuse compartment, so it does not affect me as much. I guess I’ll just ignore it, a la Maltaise.
We grumble, us Maltese, but we are also privileged to feel unaffected by a number of issues which could otherwise prove to be very irritating. But we don’t want to be confined to spending our days posting comments on The Times website, and because we know that this little island of ours has so much more to offer, most of us choose to spend time entertaining ourselves differently. It has been found for instance, that Maltese folk feature among the most frequent visitors of porn websites in the whole of Europe, no joke.
When we’re not watching porn, we read blogs while at work, eat, drink or sleep. If only life could be so simple.
In any case, pornography aside, the Maltese undoubtedly value food and beverage as a very important form of entertainment, and rightly so – we want to get the most out of it with as little effort as possible.
Since joining the EU, we’ve become better travelled and more exposed to our Mediterranean counterparts’ food and drink culture. Travelling to Italy begs the question of why we have to pay €1.50 for an espresso in Malta, when we pay €1.00 in central Rome. Better still, why does a seafood platter cost €10 in Sicily and €25 in Malta? Why don’t they ever use table wine to serve by the glass in Siena, and all we get at hotels here is Falcon or San Paolo at the ridiculous price of €3.00?
We are right in asking these questions, and it is preposterous that we never get suitably answered. The fact of the matter however, is that it is definitely more complicated than it seems at face value. I do not know the answers myself, but because I have asked myself the same questions both as a patron and a restaurateur, I may have my interpretations – albeit based on mere guess work.
I don’t like new world wines. I find the Californian, Australian or even South American way of dealing with the industry as extremely commercially-driven and lacking the necessary passion to respect the hundreds of years of tradition that translated into the quality we associate a good bottle of wine with. There are of course exceptions. There is a vast array of crap Sicilian wines on the Maltese market, and every now and then, we come across a surprisingly respectable bottle of wine from the new world. One of my favourite reds for instance, is the Kendall-Jackson Pinot Noir from the coastal regions of California. At a whopping €27, it’s not cheap, but it’s very respectable even for the price. “We get this for $20 back home,” said an American doctor who was eating at my place one night. “It’s very popular and Californians love it. It’s also very well advertised. I’m just guessing that KJ pays for local advertising from the extra it charges out of export.” I blamed it on distribution costs, but still, I could hear my own bubble burst. She opted for a local Isis from Meridiana, selling at €8 cheaper, loved it, ordered another and left a €10 tip. The closer we get to home, the better value for money any product is likely to become.
There are of course, many other factors as to why it’s not easy to get your money’s worth at an eatery in Malta. The tourism boom of the 1980s boosted demand to a level where as long as there was supply, quality did not matter. Building contractors became caterers overnight, as they converted any garage underlying a block of apartments they developed into a bar, restaurant or café. They flooded the market, but made mounds of cash. Opening a catering establishment at the time was a get-rich-quick guarantee; and skill, passion and quality were not an issue. Some made profits of 600% on food, and as long as there were no complaints, it worked. A friend whose family has been running a seafront café since the 1920s once told me that as a child, he would spend his summer days helping his father to receive more tips than the cash in the till. As much as many like to refer to the 1980s as the golden days, the decade signifies the exact opposite – it is what led us to where we are now – with a minority of young and passionate caterers not succeeding in getting a kick start into the industry by working for 1980s big-shots. God knows how many times young and energetic catering professionals now hear expressions on the lines of: “Int trid tghallem lill-missierek jahxi?” from their bosses when they try to introduce fundamental principles such as customer-orientation, fair pricing, localised sourcing, labour-intensive cuisine or innovation. Some may find ways and means of opening their own places without the necessary experience in employment, while others conform and get used to shortcuts and bad habits.
There is also the fact that our educational system is no longer in any way inclined to promote the basic tenets of manners among our children, and this invariably translates to rudeness while we are served. The profession is also stigmatised, as many Maltese parents do not want their children to “end up working as waiters.” Perhaps the worry stems from the fact that the service industry is paid peanuts in Malta. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Qualified service staff is hard to find in Malta, and when you do find, you risk ending up in an argument with a City & Guilds qualified server on the pronunciation of ‘choc-lit’ over ‘chokk-leyyyt’. Some restaurant owners found a very healthy compromise in recruiting Sicilian or Eastern-European professionals, but then you get Maltese customers looking down on the fact that ‘you’re employing foreigners over Maltese’, or that ‘the waiter does not even speak Maltese.’
You can’t please one and all, which brings me to my last point: it takes two to tango. You cannot just lay blame on restaurant owners. Many caterers who take the commercial side to their establishment seriously (and they should), will react to demand, and if they are on a main street, they will not strive in offering quality (which results into higher costs) at the risk of being looked at as an experimental or fringe establishment. Many high street caterers will choose a very well varied menu whose ingredients are shelved in freezers over a shorter menu with fresh foodstuffs. They will keep their prawn cocktail on the menu because people ask for it. They will not change their menus seasonally because they risk losing regulars enamoured with a specific dish. They will not choose a Chianti over San Paolo to serve by the glass because nobody complains anyway. Change is also driven by punters. We’re getting there, but very slowly. Without wanting to seem like I’m blowing my trumpet, I chose the hard way in offering what I deem as good quality, excluding the rest – at the risk of losing customers because the pasta is ‘al dente’, or because the menu is short. But still, I stock new world wines against my will because people would never return if my wine list does not feature the full complement. You cannot be too finicky in this industry because you’ll end up being branded as a culinary snob, and it is perfectly understandable that the right balance needs to be sought to keep customers happy.
So why are restaurants in Malta so expensive? Restaurants are no longer money-spinning businesses, and with the costs involved one would be lucky if by the end of the year, a profit representing 20% of the turnover is made. It would actually mean that a restaurant is doing pretty well. But besides service inefficiency (which increases payroll costs), a higher VAT rate on food than our destination counterparts, and a very considerable spike in utility tariffs – there is also the fact that culturally, we are prone to bad habits in catering, and as a result, we have created a general expectation and demand for a product that is ultimately low in quality and high in price.
There is no magic wand solution to the issue, but perhaps it is high time for caterers to take the plunge and collectively accept that the industry requires dedication and hard work – which will invariably translate into better quality, increased efficiency and lower prices. A concerted effort for restaurateurs to apply common principles can only be brought about by a revolution, and this can only be instigated by discerning customers.
Incidentally, steak tartare costs nothing to prepare. If you don’t want it to kill you, you will have to have your own mincer or find a butcher who will clean his equipment from the remainders of pork mince while you’re watching. This is why it is more likely for you to find it served at restaurants.
Steak Tartare:
Serves Four
500g mince of rib-eye of beef, horsemeat or fresh lamb
2 fresh eggs, lightly beaten
3-4 teaspoons capers
3-4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons red onion, finely chopped
3 dashes Tabasco
4-5 dashes Worchester sauce
Parsley
Blend the capers, mustard, onion and parsley with a hand processor. Add the Worchester sauce, Tabasco and eggs and stir. Add to the mince and mix well. With clean hands, shape the mix into steaks. Serve immediately. Do not leave the mince unrefrigerated for any length of time. Do not store the steaks or raw mince for any length of time before serving.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The mainstream grub scene
Many lay blame on the British Empire for the dissipation of our traditional culinary habits: the shifts from wine to beer, from fresh tomato sauce to ketchup, from pasta al dente to overcooked blobs of flour, from fresh minced meat to corned beef, from smoked preserved meats to luncheon meat, from home-pressed extra virgin olive oil to Leiseur, and what have you.
Our perceived change in cultural preferences may have partly contributed to the repertoire of Maltese expressions starting with a bodily orifice of choice and suffixing with “ir-Re Ġorġ”, still in use until this day. Admittedly, World War II may have also played a part.
But while I consider myself far from being your everyday Anglophile, it must be pointed out that if we feel that our food culture has somewhat digressed, we only owe the situation to ourselves. After all, it’s not like Queen Elizabeth came forcing bangers and mash down our throats.
Earlier on, while the Knights of St John were busy introducing the Dolce Vita culture to Malta, the farmer’s staple diet was reportedly limited to bread, tomatoes, oil and copious amounts of red wine. Granted that fishermen and hunters ate their own catch, but let’s face it – rabbit only made it to become our national dish because rodents were considered to be pests. Bunnies ate away the farmer’s produce, and in characteristic Maltese temperament, they were punished by slaughter, and then eaten.
The stark truth is that the Maltese popular culture has historically been more prone to quantity than quality in food, and sadly, it still largely is. Remember the Pizza Hut buffet in the 1990s?
In the past, complex or creative recipes, delicacies and fine cuisine were seemingly reserved to niches made up of those who could afford good food. Nowadays, genuine Mediterranean food is generally enjoyed by Italophiles, Francophiles or ‘foodies’ – very much like it stands in England. But the mainstream in Malta remains unwilling to experiment with its very own southern culinary traditions, and instead, favours Chinese food; frozen, canned or preserved products; and whatever is trendy – such as baguettes with chicken imported from Brazil and potato crisps on the side.
In many other food traditions, creative cooking was first introduced by the poor and the mainstream, and then it climbed the social ladder.
What is sorely missed in Maltese cuisine is a historic creativity in turning offal into delicacy, and although we are fond of our snails and rabbit – our limited repertoire of ‘poor recipes’ cannot be in any way compared to that of Italy, or even Britain for all that matters. The most popular Italian recipes - like the Carbonara, the pizza, the All’Amatriciana, the modern-day lasagne and the cotechino - were created by people on the poverty line. A very vast repertoire of ‘piatti poveri’ came to be simply because their creators could not afford to waste anything - so they turned scrap, unwanted fare, very cheap food or leftovers into prized ingredients. In England - fish and chips, black pudding, haggis, gravies and many soups are only a few examples of traditional recipes created by the extensive use of offal. Of course, the Mediterranean wins hands down on its successes over England’s corned beef, Bovril or Marmite.
Over the thousands of years of colonisation, we have had every opportunity to develop a strong culinary tradition by being selective on what foreign influences to include in our mainstream food and beverage culture. To some extent, we have succeeded with coffee, tea, beer, HP sauce, pizza, pasta, ravioli, caponata and Banoffi Pie. But we’ve also missed many boats – favouring the more practical, trendy and filling ingredients to the genuine and the authentic ones. Here’s just a taste of what could have become ours:
Impepata di Cozze
Mussels in peppered tomato sauce, typical of Southern Italy
Although Maltese seas offer the perfect habitat for mussels to grow in, there is no real commercial distributor of Maltese mussels. Mussels are either available frozen from supermarkets, or fresh-imported at some fishmongers. The shelf-life of mussels is very short, and if the shells open while they are still fresh and uncooked, it means they are dead and possibly dangerous. The safest bet is to buy the fresh Sicilian mussels refreshed at fishmongers twice a week. Mussels of the North Sea are imported every Friday, but these tend to be saltier and somewhat different to the delicately flavoured species of the Med. The ones we get from Sicily are also cheap – costing anything between €5 and €8 per kilo.
What you need for one big bowl:
1Kg mussels
800g ripe tomatoes, diced
6 gloves garlic, chopped
½ cup white wine
Powdered black pepper, in abundance
4 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Pinch of salt
Marjoram
What to do:
Clean the mussel shells using a specific wire-brush or ask your fishmonger to do it. Remove the string attached to the mussels by pulling downwards, towards the narrow part of the shell.
In a pot, prepare a tomato sauce by lightly frying the garlic in olive oil, then adding the tomato sauce, salt, pepper and marjoram. As the sauce starts drying up, add the wine and simmer.
On low heat, add the mussels to the tomato sauce and cover with a lid. Simmer until the mussel shells open.
Enjoy with fresh bread.
Our perceived change in cultural preferences may have partly contributed to the repertoire of Maltese expressions starting with a bodily orifice of choice and suffixing with “ir-Re Ġorġ”, still in use until this day. Admittedly, World War II may have also played a part.
But while I consider myself far from being your everyday Anglophile, it must be pointed out that if we feel that our food culture has somewhat digressed, we only owe the situation to ourselves. After all, it’s not like Queen Elizabeth came forcing bangers and mash down our throats.
Earlier on, while the Knights of St John were busy introducing the Dolce Vita culture to Malta, the farmer’s staple diet was reportedly limited to bread, tomatoes, oil and copious amounts of red wine. Granted that fishermen and hunters ate their own catch, but let’s face it – rabbit only made it to become our national dish because rodents were considered to be pests. Bunnies ate away the farmer’s produce, and in characteristic Maltese temperament, they were punished by slaughter, and then eaten.
The stark truth is that the Maltese popular culture has historically been more prone to quantity than quality in food, and sadly, it still largely is. Remember the Pizza Hut buffet in the 1990s?
In the past, complex or creative recipes, delicacies and fine cuisine were seemingly reserved to niches made up of those who could afford good food. Nowadays, genuine Mediterranean food is generally enjoyed by Italophiles, Francophiles or ‘foodies’ – very much like it stands in England. But the mainstream in Malta remains unwilling to experiment with its very own southern culinary traditions, and instead, favours Chinese food; frozen, canned or preserved products; and whatever is trendy – such as baguettes with chicken imported from Brazil and potato crisps on the side.
In many other food traditions, creative cooking was first introduced by the poor and the mainstream, and then it climbed the social ladder.
What is sorely missed in Maltese cuisine is a historic creativity in turning offal into delicacy, and although we are fond of our snails and rabbit – our limited repertoire of ‘poor recipes’ cannot be in any way compared to that of Italy, or even Britain for all that matters. The most popular Italian recipes - like the Carbonara, the pizza, the All’Amatriciana, the modern-day lasagne and the cotechino - were created by people on the poverty line. A very vast repertoire of ‘piatti poveri’ came to be simply because their creators could not afford to waste anything - so they turned scrap, unwanted fare, very cheap food or leftovers into prized ingredients. In England - fish and chips, black pudding, haggis, gravies and many soups are only a few examples of traditional recipes created by the extensive use of offal. Of course, the Mediterranean wins hands down on its successes over England’s corned beef, Bovril or Marmite.
Over the thousands of years of colonisation, we have had every opportunity to develop a strong culinary tradition by being selective on what foreign influences to include in our mainstream food and beverage culture. To some extent, we have succeeded with coffee, tea, beer, HP sauce, pizza, pasta, ravioli, caponata and Banoffi Pie. But we’ve also missed many boats – favouring the more practical, trendy and filling ingredients to the genuine and the authentic ones. Here’s just a taste of what could have become ours:
Impepata di Cozze
Mussels in peppered tomato sauce, typical of Southern Italy
Although Maltese seas offer the perfect habitat for mussels to grow in, there is no real commercial distributor of Maltese mussels. Mussels are either available frozen from supermarkets, or fresh-imported at some fishmongers. The shelf-life of mussels is very short, and if the shells open while they are still fresh and uncooked, it means they are dead and possibly dangerous. The safest bet is to buy the fresh Sicilian mussels refreshed at fishmongers twice a week. Mussels of the North Sea are imported every Friday, but these tend to be saltier and somewhat different to the delicately flavoured species of the Med. The ones we get from Sicily are also cheap – costing anything between €5 and €8 per kilo.
What you need for one big bowl:
1Kg mussels
800g ripe tomatoes, diced
6 gloves garlic, chopped
½ cup white wine
Powdered black pepper, in abundance
4 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Pinch of salt
Marjoram
What to do:
Clean the mussel shells using a specific wire-brush or ask your fishmonger to do it. Remove the string attached to the mussels by pulling downwards, towards the narrow part of the shell.
In a pot, prepare a tomato sauce by lightly frying the garlic in olive oil, then adding the tomato sauce, salt, pepper and marjoram. As the sauce starts drying up, add the wine and simmer.
On low heat, add the mussels to the tomato sauce and cover with a lid. Simmer until the mussel shells open.
Enjoy with fresh bread.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Damjan and other Maltese artisans
Damjan is one of my surrogate vegetable suppliers. Whenever a specific item is nowhere to be found on the market, Damjan invariably has it. Because he is so passionately in love with vegetables, his produce is always of premium standard and the veggies are always as fresh as they can get. But because he sometimes misses the most basic items – like basil, I only get to visit Damjan’s shop fortnightly or so – which is often enough for him to recognise me but not quite enough for him to remember who I am. So he always gets to repeat the same questions, each and every time I visit.
He asks where my restaurant is and promises to come one day. He repeats the same story about his son – an aspiring chef placed on an internship at the Crowne Plaza in Brussels. Because of the recession, the hotel is down on occupancy so the brigade is not very busy at the moment. I say it gives him more time to learn and he agrees. He then asks whether I’d be interested in buying his olive oil, and I keep telling him that, at his prices, I’d rather buy the olive trees myself thank you very much. He makes his defence, I agree and walk out of his shop spending twice more than I would have planned before entering. It’s always worth every penny.
Last Thursday snails were absent from any of my main suppliers’ shelves. Even the hawker at the Naxxar pjazza took the day off. Damjan of course, had mounds.
We started with the obligatory five minutes of the same old drone, I bought my sack of snails and turned down his offer for olive oil before he even asked. His retort was new this time, and even more interesting than usual.
“We take Maltese produce for granted. See how cheap the snails are?”
You don’t get many snails in a kilo. At first sight, €3.00 is inexpensive but it’s not a give-away price (in recessionary times) either. But one must consider that snail-picking and penning is an artisan’s job - and far from an easy one too. After looking for the gastropods in every nook and cranny of our countryside, snail-pickers will follow a long process before putting their produce on Damjan’s shelves. Penning for instance, will require changing the snails’ diet to pasta and semolina before they are ready to be sold. Artisans abroad are paid big money, while here we get a sack of snails for relatively nothing. If I buy it for little, I can re-sell it for little so who’s grumbling?
Snail-pickers are even at risk of losing their jobs if a new law to exclusively market farmed snails comes into force.
Damjan has a point. Many junk food lovers will favour a €6.00 Mac Donald’s meal to pastizzi - costing €0.30 each. Without going into the merits of what goes into a Big Mac, or for all that matters, the ingredients of a pastizz – little do we know that our national junk food is not at all easy to prepare. Only an exceptionally trained hand can fold the filo-pastry in such a way to shape a pastizz.
We buy a large jar of Maltese capers at €6.00 and we’re right to think it’s not cheap. But each and every caper is picked by hand. How many jars can I fill in an hour? I wonder. I wouldn’t even do it if they offered me double of what I earn (which still wouldn’t be saying much, but anyway).
Each and every sea urchin is fished in apnea, taken to shore and broken in two to take out a minute amount of juice to eventually fill a 200ml plastic container – enough for three plates of pasta. It retails at €7.00 and the price - not the work it involves – is intimidating.
So in a celebratory mood for Santa Marija, I decided to give out three recipes today – in tribute to our very own snails, capers, sea urchins and of course – Santa Marija herself.
Bebbux Aljoli
What you need:
300g snails
100ml Kinnie
250ml Lacto
Salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
Chilli
Mint
What to do:
Put the snails in a container and thoroughly wash them in salty or sea water. Keep refreshing the water until it runs clear. In a pot, lightly fry the garlic and chillies. Add the snails and stir until the shells warm up. Add the Lacto, Kinnie, salt and mint. Once the liquid starts foaming, lower the flame and cover the pot. Stir from time to time. Simmer until the snails inside the shells soften, but not too much.
Pixxispad biz-zalza tal-tadam u l-kappar
Swordish in a tomato and caper sauce
What you need:
500g swordfish (preferably from the neck side – the most tender part), cut in 3cm cubes
600g ripe tomatoes, diced
50g Maltese capers
Fresh marjoram
3-5 cloves garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Crushed black pepper
Salt
In a pan, lightly fry the swordfish cubes and put aside. In a separate saucepan, prepare a tomato sauce by first lightly frying the garlic, then adding the tomatoes, pepper and salt and covering the pan, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes melt. Lower the heat and add the capers. Simmer until the sauce starts thickening. Add the swordfish and keep simmering without allowing the fish to melt. Take off the heat, allow to rest and serve.
Spagetti bir-rizzi
Spaghetti with sea urchins
What you need:
500g Spaghetti
Salt
300ml sea urchin pulp
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Fresh parsley, chopped
What to do:
Soften the garlic in olive oil, in a pan on very low heat. In a pasta pot, bring water to the boil, add salt and chuck in the pasta. Once the pasta becomes al dente, drain through a sieve or colander. Do not rinse the pasta. Remove the pan from the flame, add the hot pasta first, then the raw rizzi and the parsley. Stir and serve.
He asks where my restaurant is and promises to come one day. He repeats the same story about his son – an aspiring chef placed on an internship at the Crowne Plaza in Brussels. Because of the recession, the hotel is down on occupancy so the brigade is not very busy at the moment. I say it gives him more time to learn and he agrees. He then asks whether I’d be interested in buying his olive oil, and I keep telling him that, at his prices, I’d rather buy the olive trees myself thank you very much. He makes his defence, I agree and walk out of his shop spending twice more than I would have planned before entering. It’s always worth every penny.
Last Thursday snails were absent from any of my main suppliers’ shelves. Even the hawker at the Naxxar pjazza took the day off. Damjan of course, had mounds.
We started with the obligatory five minutes of the same old drone, I bought my sack of snails and turned down his offer for olive oil before he even asked. His retort was new this time, and even more interesting than usual.
“We take Maltese produce for granted. See how cheap the snails are?”
You don’t get many snails in a kilo. At first sight, €3.00 is inexpensive but it’s not a give-away price (in recessionary times) either. But one must consider that snail-picking and penning is an artisan’s job - and far from an easy one too. After looking for the gastropods in every nook and cranny of our countryside, snail-pickers will follow a long process before putting their produce on Damjan’s shelves. Penning for instance, will require changing the snails’ diet to pasta and semolina before they are ready to be sold. Artisans abroad are paid big money, while here we get a sack of snails for relatively nothing. If I buy it for little, I can re-sell it for little so who’s grumbling?
Snail-pickers are even at risk of losing their jobs if a new law to exclusively market farmed snails comes into force.
Damjan has a point. Many junk food lovers will favour a €6.00 Mac Donald’s meal to pastizzi - costing €0.30 each. Without going into the merits of what goes into a Big Mac, or for all that matters, the ingredients of a pastizz – little do we know that our national junk food is not at all easy to prepare. Only an exceptionally trained hand can fold the filo-pastry in such a way to shape a pastizz.
We buy a large jar of Maltese capers at €6.00 and we’re right to think it’s not cheap. But each and every caper is picked by hand. How many jars can I fill in an hour? I wonder. I wouldn’t even do it if they offered me double of what I earn (which still wouldn’t be saying much, but anyway).
Each and every sea urchin is fished in apnea, taken to shore and broken in two to take out a minute amount of juice to eventually fill a 200ml plastic container – enough for three plates of pasta. It retails at €7.00 and the price - not the work it involves – is intimidating.
So in a celebratory mood for Santa Marija, I decided to give out three recipes today – in tribute to our very own snails, capers, sea urchins and of course – Santa Marija herself.
Bebbux Aljoli
What you need:
300g snails
100ml Kinnie
250ml Lacto
Salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
Chilli
Mint
What to do:
Put the snails in a container and thoroughly wash them in salty or sea water. Keep refreshing the water until it runs clear. In a pot, lightly fry the garlic and chillies. Add the snails and stir until the shells warm up. Add the Lacto, Kinnie, salt and mint. Once the liquid starts foaming, lower the flame and cover the pot. Stir from time to time. Simmer until the snails inside the shells soften, but not too much.
Pixxispad biz-zalza tal-tadam u l-kappar
Swordish in a tomato and caper sauce
What you need:
500g swordfish (preferably from the neck side – the most tender part), cut in 3cm cubes
600g ripe tomatoes, diced
50g Maltese capers
Fresh marjoram
3-5 cloves garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Crushed black pepper
Salt
In a pan, lightly fry the swordfish cubes and put aside. In a separate saucepan, prepare a tomato sauce by first lightly frying the garlic, then adding the tomatoes, pepper and salt and covering the pan, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes melt. Lower the heat and add the capers. Simmer until the sauce starts thickening. Add the swordfish and keep simmering without allowing the fish to melt. Take off the heat, allow to rest and serve.
Spagetti bir-rizzi
Spaghetti with sea urchins
What you need:
500g Spaghetti
Salt
300ml sea urchin pulp
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Fresh parsley, chopped
What to do:
Soften the garlic in olive oil, in a pan on very low heat. In a pasta pot, bring water to the boil, add salt and chuck in the pasta. Once the pasta becomes al dente, drain through a sieve or colander. Do not rinse the pasta. Remove the pan from the flame, add the hot pasta first, then the raw rizzi and the parsley. Stir and serve.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Wake up, it's lampuki time
In the eventuality of a customer asking me to stick to my day job for not liking my cooking, I decided against sleeping till 11:00 everyday, as most caterers rightly do, and work my mornings.
Of course, morning is merely an operative word in this case. I was never much of an early riser. If I’m at the paper early, I’m in a bad mood. If I’m late, my editor blows his top. So whenever I can, I choose to be as ‘on time’ as possible.
I had bought the loudest alarm I could find on the market so I can wake up (along with my entire neighbourhood) early enough to be in Marsaxlokk at an hour ungodly enough even for the other chefs who want the freshest ingredients available, at the best price, direct from fishermen.
The alarm, which sounds a bit like a jet airplane on heat, now comes to good use also to avoid a morning bollocking at work. Give or take that hour or two, I’m always at the paper on time, or so I like to believe.
Since I don’t open Ciao Fra on Tuesdays, I get to compensate for the rest of the week at the newsroom from morning until, on occasions, the early hours of Wednesday. Good thing I actually like my day job.
It’s now 21:30, so I finished early for today. I’m glad, honestly. It means I have more time to think of what I’m cooking at Ciao Fra tomorrow. It means I’ll wake up earlier than usual on the Wednesday - my day off from the paper, to spend some more time sourcing out ingredients for the evening’s tapas menu.
I’m hoping, Leli, my fish supplier who if born 2000 years ago would have perfectly fit the bill for Jesus of Nazareth’s thirteenth disciple, has fresh sardines tomorrow. Leli is a fisherman through and through, but life is hard when you’re just fishing and need to guarantee a future for three children. He could have made the extra cash smuggling drugs or Africans, as some fishermen in his position undoubtedly do. But he’s not the type, so he retails his catch – along with a very small percentage of farmed fish, which is amply made up for by the stuff he gets from harpoon or other amateur fishermen.
Last Sunday morning, a young fisherman walks into Leli’s shop with a jablo box.
“Ara x’ġibtlek Lel,” the boy says.
“Aw,” he shrieks. “Hemm x’hemm? Lempuki?”
“Eh. Tridhem?”
“Ma nafx ta,” he shrieks louder. “Dejv, Tridhem?”
“Ġibhem eh,” I said.
“Ħudhem mela. Kun imbierek.”
In my hands, I held one of the first catches of lampuki this year. I paid through my nose for something so common, yet so unavailable. It felt like holding a pack of Smarties prior to 1987.
I cooked fish soup. I filleted a few of them and fried them the traditional way. I made sashimi with it, and ate most of it myself. I also marinated lampuki morsels, mounted them on skewers and pan-seared them. The prep felt like being in a playground with new shoes.
Marinated Lampuki morsels on skewers
This recipe becomes more ideal when lampuki would have reached a medium size, towards September. Serves four.
What you need:
3 medium-sized lampuki
Fresh Ginger
Fresh thyme
Chillie flakes
Eight spoons quality balsamic vinegar
1 lemon, halved and juiced
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Salt
Wooden skewers
What to do:
Carefully fillet and cube the lampuki, or find a good fishmonger to do it for you. Cut the fresh ginger into very small pieces. Add to the fish along with the rest of the ingredients. Marinate for four to six hours in the fridge.
Wet the wooden skewers, mount the fish on them and sear in a dry pan for a few minutes, without allowing the lampuki to dry. Enjoy.
Of course, morning is merely an operative word in this case. I was never much of an early riser. If I’m at the paper early, I’m in a bad mood. If I’m late, my editor blows his top. So whenever I can, I choose to be as ‘on time’ as possible.
I had bought the loudest alarm I could find on the market so I can wake up (along with my entire neighbourhood) early enough to be in Marsaxlokk at an hour ungodly enough even for the other chefs who want the freshest ingredients available, at the best price, direct from fishermen.
The alarm, which sounds a bit like a jet airplane on heat, now comes to good use also to avoid a morning bollocking at work. Give or take that hour or two, I’m always at the paper on time, or so I like to believe.
Since I don’t open Ciao Fra on Tuesdays, I get to compensate for the rest of the week at the newsroom from morning until, on occasions, the early hours of Wednesday. Good thing I actually like my day job.
It’s now 21:30, so I finished early for today. I’m glad, honestly. It means I have more time to think of what I’m cooking at Ciao Fra tomorrow. It means I’ll wake up earlier than usual on the Wednesday - my day off from the paper, to spend some more time sourcing out ingredients for the evening’s tapas menu.
I’m hoping, Leli, my fish supplier who if born 2000 years ago would have perfectly fit the bill for Jesus of Nazareth’s thirteenth disciple, has fresh sardines tomorrow. Leli is a fisherman through and through, but life is hard when you’re just fishing and need to guarantee a future for three children. He could have made the extra cash smuggling drugs or Africans, as some fishermen in his position undoubtedly do. But he’s not the type, so he retails his catch – along with a very small percentage of farmed fish, which is amply made up for by the stuff he gets from harpoon or other amateur fishermen.
Last Sunday morning, a young fisherman walks into Leli’s shop with a jablo box.
“Ara x’ġibtlek Lel,” the boy says.
“Aw,” he shrieks. “Hemm x’hemm? Lempuki?”
“Eh. Tridhem?”
“Ma nafx ta,” he shrieks louder. “Dejv, Tridhem?”
“Ġibhem eh,” I said.
“Ħudhem mela. Kun imbierek.”
In my hands, I held one of the first catches of lampuki this year. I paid through my nose for something so common, yet so unavailable. It felt like holding a pack of Smarties prior to 1987.
I cooked fish soup. I filleted a few of them and fried them the traditional way. I made sashimi with it, and ate most of it myself. I also marinated lampuki morsels, mounted them on skewers and pan-seared them. The prep felt like being in a playground with new shoes.
Marinated Lampuki morsels on skewers
This recipe becomes more ideal when lampuki would have reached a medium size, towards September. Serves four.
What you need:
3 medium-sized lampuki
Fresh Ginger
Fresh thyme
Chillie flakes
Eight spoons quality balsamic vinegar
1 lemon, halved and juiced
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Salt
Wooden skewers
What to do:
Carefully fillet and cube the lampuki, or find a good fishmonger to do it for you. Cut the fresh ginger into very small pieces. Add to the fish along with the rest of the ingredients. Marinate for four to six hours in the fridge.
Wet the wooden skewers, mount the fish on them and sear in a dry pan for a few minutes, without allowing the lampuki to dry. Enjoy.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Joy of Feeding
As much as I’ve always been tempted to create a blog on food and wine, I kept putting the idea on hold until today – partly because I’ve never been much of a blogger but mostly because I dedicate more time cooking, eating, serving wine and drinking it than talking about the whole thing.
But the world of food and wine offers such significant experiences that it would be a great pity if left unshared. My most memorable moments are with food.
Wine is a different story. I find drinking pleasurable in that it complements what you’re doing – whether it’s eating, socialising, relaxing or just getting drunk. Food however, is always the subject. Socialising, celebrating, experimenting, talking about it and even making a living out of cooking are all complementary factors to its very own experience.
Nothing beats the pleasure of feeding – not even eating. The beauty of cooking, and this is probably why I am so passionate about it, lies in the fact that it is the simplest form of art, the easiest to undertake. Albeit a very simple melody, not all untrained musicians can play the tune to the famous 1980s Barilla advert on the piano. But any untrained cook can prepare spaghetti all’aglio ed olio.
Even though I had no formal training, my decision to take up food and wine as a career was taken before I could drink or drive. The thirteen years that followed saw me undertake many different catering opportunities, living as a nomad between one kitchen and cellar to another.
By sheer coincidence, in 2006 I opened the first Ciao Fra (back then spelt Caw Fra, in Maltese), a small seaside establishment in Xemxija. In the first months, I was not sure what I wanted of the place, or more precisely, I had no idea what the place wanted from me. Until the beginnings of 2008, Ciao Fra passed through many waves of it becoming known as a wine bar, a piano bar, a pasta place, a restaurant, or a club even. Its last reincarnation as a seafood tapas bar was perhaps the most successful. Regardless, the first Ciao Fra proved to be a veritable roller-coaster ride, which I was completely drawn to – heart and soul, like a difficult girlfriend. It was a huge learning curve, a baptism of fire.
2009 came and I decided to move. At the start of the summer, a friend and I re-opened a tiny catering establishment in the heart of Sliema – and we decided to retain the name Ciao Fra partly because of the magical moments many people attribute to the Xemxija place, but also because Ciao Fra’s secret is utter simplicity.
As simple, if not simpler, are the local recipes we use for tapas at the new Ciao Fra. Ultimately, an unassuming approach to food is what made Italian cuisine world known. Ciao Fra is far from being world known, seeing that only a minority of the Maltese population even know we exist. Perhaps this blog will give us an opportunity to become more known to you, and also to share some simple recipes for you to try at home.
Here’s my first installment:
This recipe brings back memories of childhood. Every time my mother cooked fish, she always boiled marrows on the side. My father would take a jar of capers from the fridge, mash them with marrows and dip fresh bread into the concoction to complement the taste of fish.
What you need:
2 marrows
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Maltese capers
Parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Chillie flakes
What to do with it:
Boil the marrows until they are al dente. Drain well. With a processor, blend with the rest of the ingredients to a chunky consistency. Enjoy chilled.
But the world of food and wine offers such significant experiences that it would be a great pity if left unshared. My most memorable moments are with food.
Wine is a different story. I find drinking pleasurable in that it complements what you’re doing – whether it’s eating, socialising, relaxing or just getting drunk. Food however, is always the subject. Socialising, celebrating, experimenting, talking about it and even making a living out of cooking are all complementary factors to its very own experience.
Nothing beats the pleasure of feeding – not even eating. The beauty of cooking, and this is probably why I am so passionate about it, lies in the fact that it is the simplest form of art, the easiest to undertake. Albeit a very simple melody, not all untrained musicians can play the tune to the famous 1980s Barilla advert on the piano. But any untrained cook can prepare spaghetti all’aglio ed olio.
Even though I had no formal training, my decision to take up food and wine as a career was taken before I could drink or drive. The thirteen years that followed saw me undertake many different catering opportunities, living as a nomad between one kitchen and cellar to another.
By sheer coincidence, in 2006 I opened the first Ciao Fra (back then spelt Caw Fra, in Maltese), a small seaside establishment in Xemxija. In the first months, I was not sure what I wanted of the place, or more precisely, I had no idea what the place wanted from me. Until the beginnings of 2008, Ciao Fra passed through many waves of it becoming known as a wine bar, a piano bar, a pasta place, a restaurant, or a club even. Its last reincarnation as a seafood tapas bar was perhaps the most successful. Regardless, the first Ciao Fra proved to be a veritable roller-coaster ride, which I was completely drawn to – heart and soul, like a difficult girlfriend. It was a huge learning curve, a baptism of fire.
2009 came and I decided to move. At the start of the summer, a friend and I re-opened a tiny catering establishment in the heart of Sliema – and we decided to retain the name Ciao Fra partly because of the magical moments many people attribute to the Xemxija place, but also because Ciao Fra’s secret is utter simplicity.
As simple, if not simpler, are the local recipes we use for tapas at the new Ciao Fra. Ultimately, an unassuming approach to food is what made Italian cuisine world known. Ciao Fra is far from being world known, seeing that only a minority of the Maltese population even know we exist. Perhaps this blog will give us an opportunity to become more known to you, and also to share some simple recipes for you to try at home.
Here’s my first installment:
This recipe brings back memories of childhood. Every time my mother cooked fish, she always boiled marrows on the side. My father would take a jar of capers from the fridge, mash them with marrows and dip fresh bread into the concoction to complement the taste of fish.
What you need:
2 marrows
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Maltese capers
Parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Chillie flakes
What to do with it:
Boil the marrows until they are al dente. Drain well. With a processor, blend with the rest of the ingredients to a chunky consistency. Enjoy chilled.
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