Life Without Anchovies: Local Food in Malta

Before we Flew out to Malta, we visited my niece in Melbourne, and sourced some local fish and chips in Smith street - (possibly the best fish and chips I have ever eaten) served with house made tartare sauce so fresh I could taste the capers and dill. Polished off with some local beers made with Victorian grown hops. :) It was so nice to have a cold beer on a hot day. I have missed that.

On arrival in Malta, we had a few weeks left of the year to experience Malta's local cuisine.

Only joking! We could not buy this until after the new year! I have no idea where it was made, but certainly not in malta!

We quickly became aware of the local staples. Wine, cheese, olives, seafood, pork, oranges, dates, figs, honey, and fruit jams. Our flat has a great view over small fields, rather like allotments, and I love watching the farmers working them by hand.

the view from our balcony

local family planting potatoes

watering

Walking around Gozo, the island where we are staying, I was struck by the amount of vegetable growing. The land is carved up into very small plots. The crops are mostly vegetables, similar to they ones we grow in Australia, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, broad beans, the common annuals.

Granny's carob syrup - very sweet, seems like mostly sugar.

Pommegranite jelly and Prickly pear jam, again both very sweet, not much flavour. I think they are mostly tourist fodder as I have yet to find any menu's in Malta including Pomegranate, Prickly pear, or carob

There are orchards, mostly of citrus, and pomegranate, but also some stone fruits. Many olive trees, and vineyards, but all on a small scale.Carob trees, and almonds grow wild, as do prickly pear, and bamboo. The locals use the prickly pear as wind breaks, and shelter for their seedlings, as well as harvesting the fruit for jam and licquer.The bamboo is used for training climbing veg, and constructing shade structures, including shades on roof terraces and pergolas.

cactus is rampant

The Pomegranate licquer was a disappointment unfortunately.

The soils appear thin like ours, and limestone rich. The boundaries of the fields are lined with limestone walls. The other thing we noticed were many small huts around th landscape, we thought that they may have been shepherd's huts, but they were built as hides for bird trappers. They are very numerous accross the island, not so numerous are the birds. But that may also have something to do with the profuse number of stray cats roaming around.

The most appealing thing about Gozo agriculture is the lack of mechanical input. The majority of fields are tilled by hand, some watered by hand held hose, weeded, and harvested by hand
The one exception being a small hand held cultivator that they walk behind, to till the soil, and prepare trenches for planting. the ingenious thing about this little machine, is that when they have finished on the field, they can replace the blades with wheels, which then allow it to be used to tow a trailer, giving the farmer a nifty ride home with his utensils. I love this idea for our ecovillage.

the machine up close

with trailer attached

the cultivator in action

Our meals here have been an adventure, I was expecting a spicy, middle eastern influence. But I would have to say that the food more resembles Greek cuisine to me. (I thought that Moroccan food would be spicy too - very disappointed) English is the national language along with Maltese, which is just as well because there are a lot of consonants in their words, and there is a lot of toungue curling and sort of grunting. It sounds a bit like a mixture of French and Arabic. I cannot pronounce most of the town names. So just as well the menu's are all in english. Here is what we have been eating: