Maltese menus look meat-heavy and mostly are. What is actually here if you do not eat it, and it is more than you would guess.
Read a traditional Maltese menu quickly and it looks like a wall of rabbit, horse and pork. It is a fair first impression and an incomplete one.
What is actually on the table
Bigilla, the broad bean dip. Ġbejniet, fresh or peppered. Kapunata — aubergine, tomato, capers, olives, cooked right down. Stuffed marrows. Ħobż biż-żejt, bread with oil and tomato, which sounds like nothing and is not. Soups, most of them vegetable-based before anyone added meat to them.
There is a historical reason the vegetable cooking is this good. Meat was for Sundays and feast days for most of this island's history. Everything else — the beans, the bread, the cheese, whatever grew — had to carry the rest of the week, so it got taken seriously.
The vegetable dishes here are not an accommodation. They are the older half of the cuisine.
Tell us when you book and the kitchen will build the table around it.
Photo: Ofelia94 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Read a traditional Maltese menu quickly and it looks like a wall of rabbit, horse and pork. It is a fair first impression and an incomplete one.
What is actually on the table
Bigilla, the broad bean dip. Ġbejniet, fresh or peppered. Kapunata — aubergine, tomato, capers, olives, cooked right down. Stuffed marrows. Ħobż biż-żejt, bread with oil and tomato, which sounds like nothing and is not. Soups, most of them vegetable-based before anyone added meat to them.
There is a historical reason the vegetable cooking is this good. Meat was for Sundays and feast days for most of this island's history. Everything else — the beans, the bread, the cheese, whatever grew — had to carry the rest of the week, so it got taken seriously.
The vegetable dishes here are not an accommodation. They are the older half of the cuisine.
Tell us when you book and the kitchen will build the table around it.
Photo: Ofelia94 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Previous post
Next post