LOCAL HEROES
How do ensure you don’t make a Maltese cross? You celebrate their homegrown ingredients, as ANNA STARNES discovers
ASHARP peppery flavour pricked the back of my throat as I reached again to mop a roughly cut slice of bread through a dish of pungent olive oil. The taste was so gloriously intense it plunged me into a coughing fit, but the golden liquid lured me back in.
It was happily unrecognisable from the supermarket variety I’d grown used to. Back home in England I’d be scraping frost off my car to trek to work but instead on my winter holiday to discover Malta’s burgeoning gastronomic scene, I found myself embraced by the sun in a rural olive grove.
Malta’s local food and wine were once overshadowed by its Mediterranean neighbours, but they are now enjoying a revival.
Immanuel Grima, whose family owns this olive grove nestled between Bidnija and Wardija, is one of those on a mission to promote sustainable, local products.
He explained that 10 to 15 years ago there was a resurgence in planting olive groves, although many growers used Italian olive varieties.
Not the Grimas. His family proudly planted a grove of the Bidni olive – a variety native to Malta.
Although it produces less olive oil because of its early harvest, the unique spicy flavour – and the fact that it is purely Maltese – make it a valued product.
The Grima family has partnered with The Mediterranean Culinary Academy to sell their olive oil and to host ‘From Branch to Bottle’ events at the grove.
You can tour the grove, and even harvest the olives if you arrive from mid-September to mid-October.
You can also blind-taste test three different olive oils – a recently produced Bidni olive oil, a supermarket version and an older Bidni olive oil.
Similar to a wine tasting, you need to jostle the liquid around before you take a swill. I immediately noticed the difference between the massproduced variety and the grove’s.
The supermarket version simply had no flavour.
After the tasting, we enjoyed the oil, accompanied by hobz tal-Malti – Maltese sourdough bread
– and food. That’s how I found myself sitting behind a gingham clothcovered table strewn with olive branches and heaving with slowcooked porchetta, crispy roast potatoes slathered in garlic and other local dishes.
Around us rose a mesmerising expanse of arid terraced hills, crisscrossed by rubble walls and engulfed by that stillness you can only find in the countryside. I could have happily sat dunking bread into oil all afternoon, but my more gastronomic adventures awaited.
Also intent on championing local Maltese food is chef Rafel Sammut.
The owner of the Pulled Meat Company recently opened new restaurant Briju, where he uses almost solely local ingredients.
He gave me a tour of his weekly shopping spots, which is how I ended up milking a sheep...
Thankfully, it was mostly patient as my suburban hands tried to tackle the proper technique.
The poor thing was part of a flock at the Tal-Karmnu Farm Shop in Zebbug.
Four years ago, the farm, run by the Agius family, just produced meat and veg but faced hard times.
The family either had to close the farm or find a more modern way of doing business. Now, it is not only known for its sheep’s milk ice cream and cheese but also for opening its farm up to visitors.
You can get a glimpse into daily farm life by carrying out the cheesemaking process from start to finish.
After I’d had chance to coax a few streams of milk into a pail, it was time to transform it into traditional gbejniet cheese. Emanuel Agius, who runs the business with his parents and one of his brothers, Joseph, showed us how to add the rennet enzyme to the milk.
We each took a turn scooping the jelly-like liquid into a mould, which would eventually firm into cheese.
Then the family brought out a spread of fresh soft gbejniet cheese, which is what ours would eventually morph into. There was also dry gbejniet – harder and flavoured with pepper and spices – hobz tal-Malti slathered in tomato and more.
Making cheese would be a normal, mundane task for many of the locals, but it was fascinating to me.
On my culinary adventure, I tasted a vast range of incredible locally sourced Maltese products, including everything from carpaccio made from lampuki fish at Rafel Sammut’s Briju, to the peppery Bidni olive oil at the Grima family’s grove.
Although their products might be different, every entrepreneur had one thing in common: immense pride in using sustainable local Maltese ingredients. Their eyes lit up when they started describing how their product was made, and the fact that it is ‘pure Maltese’.
They were generous with their time and even more generous with their portion sizes.
I left feeling well fed and hopeful that one day I’d be able to pick up their goods in my Co-Op.