travel
Shark and honey Malta has long been overlooked as a foodie destination – but no more. Ella Walker takes a trip to the archipelago in the middle of the Med and finds it a gourmet’s dream.
T
he light is dandelion yellow, I am trussed up in a net veil, and a fierce buzzing is coming from a frame covered in the busy bodies of hundreds of armoured honey bees. “You have to do it their way,” explains Maltese beekeeper Arnold fondly, on the making of honey. With 66 years of experience and 180 bee colonies in his care, the man’s an authority, and jars of his sweet stuff are sold all over the island. Flavoured seasonally by the flowers his bees feast on – from orange blossom to white thistle and borage – it’s honey worth travelling for, especially when you consider it takes only three hours to fly to Malta. Traditionally, people visited Malta for the almost year-round sunshine, but I’m spending a long weekend exploring the archipelago as a gourmet destination. Historically Malta has been endlessly fought over, and the impact is still being felt. Take their olives. During Roman times, Malta’s indigenous olive trees sprawled across the entire rocky landmass, until later colonisers, including the British during the 1800s, foolishly decided to rip them up to make way for cotton fields and sheep farming. But in the last few years, Maltese olive oil has experienced a renaissance. The familyrun San Niklaw Estate Malta, near Popeye Village, produces both wine and olive oil. The vineyard produces four wines each season – which you can try on bespoke wine-tasting courses (enquire at info@ sanniklaw.com) – two red, two white (priced at 25-30 euros a bottle). Family, pride and community are intrinsically bound in Maltese food culture, so much so that founder John isn’t abashed to admit: “At restaurants, I always order my own wine, and seeing someone ordering it at the next table? I can’t describe what it means to me.” Valletta itself is tiny with a population of just 7,000. During siesta it’s so still and hushed, no one will witness you eating a late lunch of lamb crusted in pistachio at Panorama. Inside, the restaurant is cool and dark, all matte greys and sparkling glass, but the meat is perfectly pink (as it
GETTING THERE ■ Ella Walker was a guest of the Maltese tourist board. For more information about the Maltese archipelago, visit visitmalta.com ■ Flights to Malta from London Gatwick start from £132 return with British Airways (britishairways.com). ■ Rooms at the Radisson Blu Malta St Julian’s in Valletta (radissonblu.com/ en/stjuliansresort-malta) start from £85 per room per night. STILL WATERS: Clockwise from top, Valletta at sunset from the sea; lamb crusted in pistachio at Panorama; artichoke pasta at Ta’Philip. 74
the magazine SATURDAY APRIL 1 2017
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should be for 28 euros) and the view of the Grand Harbour from the wide balcony begs for a dazzling sunset dinner. You are never far from the sea here. It’s all you can smell at Marsaxlokk in the south-east of the island, a fishing village that on Sunday mornings is all a-bustle with fishermen’s wives selling soft-bellied baby sharks, the still-slithering, hulking bodies of eels and one-euro salmon heads that are used in aljotta, a traditional Maltese fish soup. Later, after catching the ferry from Malta’s northern point, Cirkewwa harbour, to Gozo island, 25 minutes away, I meet Philip, chef patron of traditional Gozo restaurant Ta’ Philip. Tradition and canny cooking are in the bones of this place. Leftover vegetables and peelings go straight to the chickens, while gaps in the oven are plugged with aubergines and onions – skins on – until they come out soft and charred, needing just a glug of olive oil. There are certain rules too, like don’t mess with the basics, particularly the Maltese equivalent of the Italian soffritto (the foundation for most soups and stews). “It’s the base,” explains Philip. “You don’t
SMALL WONDER: A street view in Malta’s capital Valletta – home to just 7,000 people.
There is much that seems romantically pastoral about Malta’s food scene.
live without onion and garlic! People that ask to leave it out? You joking?” At nearby Rikardu’s farm, gbejniet is made by hand milking 200-odd sheep and goats each morning. It sounds idyllic, and the location is – the farm is a patchwork of lush vineyards, gnarled lemon trees and jabbering, leaping goats. However, I quickly learn that milking
is not enchantingly rural; it’s tough and uncomfortable. I can’t get a proper grip on the goat’s velveteen udders and fail to get more than an egg cup of milk. Rikardu sells his cheese from his farm and his restaurant, Ta’ Rikardu, either fresh, topped with Gozo salt; in homemade ravioli; or dried and marinated in white wine and black pepper (most popular with the Maltese), or chilli and dried tomato. There is much that seems romantically pastoral about Malta’s food scene, but the rubbly charm and high levels of deliciousness often belie the work involved. Travel along Gozo’s northern coastline for instance, and you’re met by an otherworldly, stark blue and desertyellow Star Wars-like landscape. The Qbajjar salt pans are a criss-cross network of oblong salt fields at the mercy of the Mediterranean Sea that have been manned by the Cini family for five generations. It will be Josephine Cini’s elderly parents’ 49th summer laboriously collecting and selling their crystalline Gozo salt here this year. She explains: “The salt preserves their love.” So, perhaps it is a little bit romantic after all.
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