Cuisine
Maltese cooking sits between Sicily and North Africa: rabbit stews, savoury pastries and slow tomato-based braises.
Maltese cooking sits between Sicily and North Africa: rabbit stews, savoury pastries and slow tomato-based braises.
Questions from the pass
Maltese food bridges Southern Sicily and North Africa. It pairs Italian base techniques—like tomato, garlic, and olive oil braises—with Middle Eastern spices such as coriander, cumin, cinnamon, and aniseed. You see this in dishes like kapunata (Maltese ratatouille) and imqaret (date-filled pastries), where Mediterranean produce meets spiced sweet fillings.
Stuffat tal-feneq (rabbit stew) requires jointing a whole rabbit and marinating it in red wine, garlic, and bay leaves overnight. Brown the meat, then braise it slowly at 150°C for two to three hours with onions, carrots, peas, and tomato paste (kunserva). Serve the rich sauce over spaghetti first, followed by the meat.
Pastizzi use a laminated, puff-style pastry made from flour, water, and lard or vegetable shortening. The dough is rolled paper-thin, coated with fat, rolled into a tight log, and cut into rounds. This creates a highly flaky texture when baked at 220°C for 20 minutes. Fillings are traditionally ricotta or curried mushy peas.
Kunserva is a thick, sweet Maltese tomato paste made from sun-ripened tomatoes and sea salt. It is much sweeter and denser than standard Italian tomato purée. Chefs use it as a base for stews like bragioli (beef olives) or spread directly onto sourdough bread (ħobż biż-żejt) with olive oil, tuna, and capers.
Traditional Maltese sausage (zalzett tal-Malti) is a pork sausage heavily seasoned with coriander seeds, black peppercorns, garlic, parsley, and sea salt. It contains roughly 80% lean pork to 20% fat. It can be eaten raw when sun-dried, or cooked fresh by boiling, pan-frying, or crumbling into pasta sauces to release its coriander-forward fat.
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