The long pale marrow that turns up in half of Maltese home cooking, and what the kitchen does with it in October.
Qarabagħli is not quite a courgette and not quite a marrow — long, pale, ribbed, and sold by the armful in every Maltese market from summer through autumn.
What we do with it
Stuffed, mostly, which is the traditional answer to nearly any Maltese vegetable: minced meat, tomato, herbs, baked until the whole thing collapses gently into itself. Also sliced into stews, into soups, into the vegetable dishes that carry the table alongside the meat.
October is its last proper month. The autumn garden here has a short, generous window between the heat leaving and the cold arriving, and the kitchen leans on it while it lasts.
Maltese vegetable cooking was never the side dish. For most of the island's history it was the meal.
Photo: KNOW MALTA by Peter Grima / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
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Qarabagħli is not quite a courgette and not quite a marrow — long, pale, ribbed, and sold by the armful in every Maltese market from summer through autumn.
What we do with it
Stuffed, mostly, which is the traditional answer to nearly any Maltese vegetable: minced meat, tomato, herbs, baked until the whole thing collapses gently into itself. Also sliced into stews, into soups, into the vegetable dishes that carry the table alongside the meat.
October is its last proper month. The autumn garden here has a short, generous window between the heat leaving and the cold arriving, and the kitchen leans on it while it lasts.
Maltese vegetable cooking was never the side dish. For most of the island's history it was the meal.
Photo: KNOW MALTA by Peter Grima / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
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