Must try food in Malta

If you really want to get a proper taste of Malta, I'd suggest not only visiting touristic areas, but also trying out Maltese food. Mediterranean food is considered to be one of the best in terms of taste and variation.

Today, I'm going to tell you what is essential to try out when in Malta -

Food

1. Twistees: If you have relatives in Malta, I am pretty sure you have heard of this snack before. If not... Twistees is by far the favourite savoury snack of Maltese people. You can find this snack from just about anywhere: supermarkets, bars, confectioneries, petrol stations... Just look for a red and yellow packet, and it's probably Twistees.

The snack itself is made from rice and maize grits, and the taste is VERY cheesy. Only try this at your own risk, because if you enjoy it - it is most probably going to be very addictive!

You can find these snacks for sale in the UK under the name Tastees from www.tastees.info  (I just discovered this jewel myself!)

2. Galletti: These are most of the time found in a round shape. Essentially they are water crackers. Nowadays you can find these plain (original format), or even with flavours and herbs. My favourite is galletti with salt and black pepper.

3. Gbejniet: These are small round cheeslets which are made from goat's milk (also sheep's milk). These cheeslets are used in several Maltese dishes, ranging from starters to main dishes - salads, pasta, pizza, soup... You name it! Gbejniet are incredibly delicious with galletti and in summer, it goes well with Maltese bread.

Maltese bread with kunserva and other toppings

4: Mmmmmaltese Bread: Whether you love bread or you don't - you must try Maltese bread! Especially bread bought directly from a bakery - fresh and warm! Also ask for a 'ftira' - this is simply divine with the following toppings: Kunserva with gbejniet, canned tuna, olives, capers, gbejniet and olive oil; especially at the beach!


5. Kunserva: This is the best sauce to go with Maltese bread. The taste is rather sweet, but go on... try it! Just spread it on the bread, and add olive oil to taste! The kunserva is also used with red pasta sauce to increase texture and taste. Ideal with that pasta Bolognese we all love so much!

Bigilla (the brown paste)

6. Bigilla: Bigilla is eaten all year round, but it is perfect for summer. This goes well as a dip with galletti, and also as an ingredient to a cold salad. The main ingredient in Bigilla is Djerba beans. I know, it doesn't sound apetising - but a lot of people grow fond of it.

7. Pastizzi: Pastizzi - fattening, but delicious! Also know as Cheesecakes / Peacakes by tourists. It is a savoury snack which have a filling of either ricotta or mushy peas. Eating these, while drinking a cup of tea is a must! Great for breakfast or as a snack.
They are available in two shapes: diamond or round. They are folded differently depending to the filling. These are usually baked on metal drays and are available from cafes and pastizzerias all around the island.

8: Mqaret: Commonly found in feasts and Valletta. These are delicious daimond shaped pastries stuffed with dates and deep fried. Again, these are not for people who are on diet, however you can buy healthier version of these from the supermarket. Most of the time available frozen - and then you can always bake them instead. Taste wise, the deep fried ones are much better. Mqaret is the plural of maqrut. The word maqrut derives from an Arabic word meaning a 'diamond'.

Drinks

9. Cisk Lager: This is the best beer you can find locally. Also you can find a 'light' version of it called Cisk Excel. Other variations are Cisk Chill which contains a lemon flavour, and Cisk XS which is extra strong (and very sweet!)

10. Kinnie: This is the soft drink Malta is known for. It has been created in the early 1950s, and it's taste is of bitter oranges and aromatic herbs. It sure quenches your taste!

If you are visiting the islands in Summer, make sure you always carry with you a bottle of water, otherwise you're risking dehydration due to the heat!

Have fun.

Maltese Recipes: Qaghaq tal-Gunglien

When I miss Malta, one way of feeling closer to Malta and its people for me, is not through a telephone call or a chat conversation, but through cooking a maltese dish. As such, I thought I'd share a recipe with you all.

One of my favourite tea-time biscuits coming from Malta are 'Qaghaq tal-Gunglien', which translates to Sesame Seeds Ring Biscuits.

Please find below the ingredients you require, the recipe itself and also photos I have taken whilst cooking these biscuits:

- 500g Plain flour
- 200g Castor sugar
- 200g margarine (ideally, no trans-fat)
- 1 x 11g packet dried yeast
- ½ tsp aniseed
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp vanilla (ideally, poweder)
- Grated zest of 1 lemon lemon
- 180ml luke warm water
- Lots of Sesame Seeds

Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and sift.
Mix into it the lemon zest.
Using your fingertips, rub into the mixture the margarine, until the mixture looks sandy.
Add the water a little at a time, until the mixture is turned into a dough.

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Leave the dough to rest for more than 2 hours. Ovenight rest is ideal.

Close view to the pastry.

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Flour the table top you will be using, and take the dough out of the bowl.
Cut a small piece of the pastry and roll it onto the flour, to form a long pipe.
Cut and twist the pipe around to create a ring and place it on a baking tray.

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Once you have used all the pastry, leave them to rest for yet another hour.
The rings might puff up and end up touching each other. Nothing to worry about here.

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Brush up the top of each ring with water and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.
Preheat the over at 160C and then bake the rings for not more than 15minuted.
You will know they're down once the rings are brown on top, yet still rather soft  when you touch them.

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The finishing should look like this:

If you skip the 1 hour waiting time before putting them in the oven, the biscuits look like this:

Either way... they are very tasty.

Store in an air-tight containter and consume within 2-5 days.

Sun or Rain - Only God knows when.

So, 

One of the main reasons I left Malta, and decided to live in the U.K. is due to the fact that in Malta we get approximately 5 months of Summer -  starting end of April and lasts until around mid September. 

Though summer is nice, it's very humid and sweaty in Malta; with a temperature averaging 35 Degrees Celsius and during heatwaves, over 40. Though in the offices or at home, it's nice and cool thanks to airconditioning and fans, as soon as you go outside it feels like you just walked into an oven. 

In contrast to this, summer in the UK has been horrible this year. In the past month, I can hardly remember any days rain-free. Even though it is a nice change to summer as I know it, I’d rather have last year’s English summer. I think summer here will have the highest rainfall since record.

Hoping August will bring more sun to this summer-less island...

A day in lovely Gozo

During my last visit to Malta, less than a month ago, I took Mark for the first time to Gozo. For those who never heard of Gozo, this is the sister island of Malta. It was mid-June, and the temperature on the islands is around 25 Degrees Celcius; Sunny, with the occassional breeze. Gozo is smaller than Malta, and is less populated and it tends to be more quiet, and greener.

I think that the perfect time to visit Malta is either in June or in September, when the weather is good and yet not too hot and humid.

My dad offered to drive us to Cirkewwa, and so it didn't take long until we were waiting for the Gozo ferry. Mark and I managed to find a seat outside, and so we could appreciate the views better.

When in Gozo, we visited Rabat (also known as Victoria), the capital city. I took Mark to my favourite cafe in Gozo (and Malta too!), called Cafe Jubilee. Although Cafe Jubilee is also available in Malta, the first shop was open in Gozo, and as such the owner is Gozitan. If you ever have the opportunity to go to this cafe, I suggest you try their Rikotta pastizzi, which are home-made. Their bread is also a must-try - especially the 'ftira'.

After a nice snack and chilling at the cafe, we took a bus and made our way to Marsalforn, which is one of my favourite spots in Gozo. The beach was so inviting and it was a shame we didn't have our bathing suit on! There were barely any people around...

However in the bay close to Marsalforn we encountered my biggest enemy... the Jellyfish...

It was a shame that we could only stay for a day.

I would love to live in Gozo one day. It's just so beautiful and quiet.

Dreams

Have you ever had one of those dreams, which feels SO real?
Which wake you up in the middle of the night?
So intense, that you feel like whatever happened was not just an illusion... and your mind keeps wondering about it for the rest of the day.... irregardless where you are or what you're doing?

If yes... read on....

I for one, am not a person who remembers their dreams every night. I tend to only remember the disturbing ones, or the intense ones. Last night was one of those nights, and the worst part is, that I woke up countless of times during the night... and the dream yet continues, as if it never even stopped... It was one of those dreams, that if I didn't have to go to work the next morning, I'd just get up and not sleep at all.

 

Do you believe that dreams are trying to tell us something?
Do you think it is a reflection of our life, or our worries? 

I have always believed that when we are asleep, we enter another world, and it is totally separate from life as we know it... But even though I say this... I can't help thinking about certain dreams... They just change my mood, either for the better, or for the worse.

Share your thoughts with me, go on.

Malta's decline in tourism

I was looking at a few articles on the Times of Malta website today, as I try to keep in touch with what is going on in Malta and about the general current affairs.

From what I read today, and yesterday, I think I can come up with a few reasons with regarding the decrease of tourists to Malta.

The most obvious reason seems to be the recession that most of Europe is going through. Everywhere I go, people seem to be struggling to make ends meets. Even here in the UK, I came across an article which says that families are eating food even after they're expired, as well as keeping left overs in the fridge for a longer time period. Needless to say, this is happening in several other countries, even in Malta.

This brings me to the next point, which is: foreigners cannot afford to travel as much as they used to, or their budget is less than it was a few years ago. Even though Malta, in comparison to other European countries is rather cheap to live in (food, accomodation, transport), the flights to Malta are alarmingly expensive. I think this is a disadvantage which cannot be overlooked. Furthermore, since to my knowledge shops do not need to have items tagged with a price by law, some shop owners tend to take advantage of tourists. This is due to the fact that tourists would not know how much they are expected to pay for a bottle of water for instance. I have seen this happening with my own eyes, and in the past it also happened to me, even though I am local.

In a way, I am glad that less tourists are visiting Malta, because most of Malta is going through roadworks. Too many main-roads are closed down because  of this, and traffic is alarmingly worse. It is bad enough when there are no road works! I think roadworks are very repulsive, and closing down such roads during summer, which in Malta is the highest tourist peak is more or less insane. Having said that, I would also like to mention that such work on the roads creates an increase in probability when it comes to trafffic accidents. Traffic accidents involving tourists will only give Malta a bad name.

Having said all the above, I still think that Malta is a great holiday destination, especially during summer time, when the weather is pefect for the beach, when nightlife is at its best... And who can forget those marvellous historical places and the delicious food?

All Seasons in 1 Month

When living in England, one of the advantages is to live on island, yet you wouldn't endure the heat the summer brings. But it is also a known fact, that weather in the UK is very much depressing for any Mediterranean peeps living there, due to clouds and rain during the majority of the year.

This is true.

I would say that I enjoy the fact that I don't sweat like a pig 24/7 for four recurring months, but at times - not seeing the sun for weeks makes me want to go hysterical. It is not the heat that I miss, it is the opportunity of wearing summer clothes, sandals, and not carrying a jacket wherever I go.

Since the first of June, until today the 25th of June, I could say that here in Stoke we had weather from all seasons. It started off really cold with drizzle, freezing nights with temperature just above 0 degrees and hail during the days, and for the past 5 days, a heatwave with temperature of 20 to 25 degrees during the day. Last night the temperature at 1am was at 18 degrees, with no sign of breeze.  It was pretty much pointless leaving my bedroom window fully open all night. But, no mosquitos - yay! It was so warm, that I thanked my lucky stars that I do not share my house with anyone else and I could run about wearing (or not wearing!) anything I want.

Though I am complaining about the heat, I must admit that it is a lovely change to see a constantly blue sky, and wearing summer dresses. As such, I'm planning on taking advantage of the situation and visit a park this weekend :)

So, fingers crossed on this... and prepare yourselves for some blog posts with photos... Not just from this weekend, but also London and Holland.

Steffi xxx