Cibus (October 2017)

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ISSUE â„–

58

the ultimate food platform

OCTOBER 2017



editorial

Autumn — decay, change, little glimpses of winter. The initial dread that would claw at me when school would be starting again as a child has left me, or at the very least matured into an overall dread for what lies ahead. Truth be told, it’s a little more nuanced and ambivalent than that; I look forward to all the things to come, but I often find myself dazed and looking around when I look back at all that has passed me by, and how quickly time passes. That hasn’t changed, everything passes all too quickly, and all my past selves would nod and whine in agreement. In fact, my absolute favourite part of summers was how long the day would feel, there was more time for fun before bedtime would roll around. Now? Night time doesn’t mean it’s bed time, hardly ever, but the waning of the daylight once October rolls around, the packed school vans and talk of back-to-school deals still clenches my chest. It will probably never go away. Which is why I’ve taken to like rituals all the more, why seasons have such a marked impact on my thinking. Every occasion that rolls around, every religious feast, every landmark is an anchor; a moment in the ‘now’ that keeps me in the present and aware of my choices. It’s something I have come to appreciate when talking about things like fashion, something which never interested me much as a child (unless we were talking superheroes or cartoon characters) but has since had its importance revealed to me — and with it, the importance of seasons. Life shouldn’t be like the inside of a casino; with artificial air and no markers of time. We shouldn’t suddenly walk out and be surprised by the daylight, with emptier pockets and lingering regret. We should, if I could lecture a little, prepare our days around the things that connect us to the present as well as each other. We should keep things simple, try new things, and know each day a little more intimately. Kriss Zammit Endrich has once again designed our cover, an emblematic and simple representation of both autumn and some of the content in our magazine, the rest of which is depicted clearly on our contents page and then spread out across the issue, which was carefully designed and organised by Krista Bugeja. THIS PUBLICATION IS BEING DISTRIBUTED AS PART OF:

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole, or in part, is strictly prohibited without written permission. Opinions expressed in Cibus are not necessarily those of the editor-in-chief or publisher. All reasonable care is taken to ensure truth and accuracy, but the editor-in-chief and publisher cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in articles, advertising, photographs or illustrations. The editorin-chief is not responsible for material submitted for consideration. Executive editor Jamie Iain Genovese (cibus@timesofmalta.com) Publisher Allied Newspapers Ltd. Printing Progress Press Co. Ltd. Production Allied Newspapers Ltd. Design Krista Bugeja Advertising Sales Marisa Schembri (tel: 2276 4337; marisa.schembri@timesofmalta.com)


We’ve looked into pears and their history and found a recipe for them amongst a few other editorial picks and ‘must-try’s. The pear was incorporated into our cover as a somewhat emblematic euphemism for the season of their abundance. Of course, pears aren’t loved by all (though the recipe we’ve found for them is quite spectacular, to be sure) and so we’ve made sure to include a little variety, along with a towering cliché for this coming time of year: soups. Rituals, in a sense, are cliché, but only if we treat them like they don’t matter, like we don’t matter. Soups, while not very exciting, are still a core part of the colder months and enjoyed by many. This salient fact, this straying stroll away from the desire of novelty or originality, is what spurred the decision to have an abundance of pages dedicated to soup recipes. This section, so dedicated to soup, has temporarily replaced the ingredient of the month that we normally place in the centrefold, and the recipe pages have been complimented by images of ingredients before they were turned into soup — an immortalisation of a moment in their existence, a frozen image immune to their cellular decay. Wanting to forever preserve the present, to slow down the passage of time, to enjoy what is beautiful now for more, more, and more time is something that I think we all want and feel a little upset over never getting. We’ll always want for five minutes at six in the morning on a work day to last thirty, we’ll want for one more day with our loved ones, and children and teachers will want for just a bit more of summer. We’ll always want more of whatever is beautiful to us. Zeus did it for Ganymede, and it is during the writing of this editorial letter that I may have learned the significance of Autumn in Ganymede, the title to an instrumental song that scored one of my favourite television shows of all time. How funny, a season of decay on a moon named after someone immortalised by a Greek god for their beauty, so that they may forever be a cupbearer. October, Autumn, comes as a reminder that we are not Greek gods, and nothing on Earth will last forever. Don’t let seasons pass you by, and don’t let the fear of clichés or unoriginality keep you away from something good, from something beautiful, even if it’s just a really tasty soup.

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ten s

C on t

Danny Coleiro returns with a little recipe for some wonderful octopus, a dish that I have personally always savoured as the summer days slipped away, and he throws a few jabs at the more finnicky and gimmicky side of food that might put on airs as well as a show. Mantas Sakas Stočkus shares his experience with a wonderful, if modest, spot for a pizza in Valletta you can enjoy in the ever-earlier twilight of an autumn’s day. Alison Cilia Werdmölder generously shares a recipe her grandmother would make her, a dish she’s loved since childhood, a dish we’re sure you’ll like as well.

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RECIPES 4 HONEY AND BUTTER PEARS 8 FRIJOLES REFRITOS 14 KUL ĦA TIKBER! 20 DRUNKEN SPAGHETTI 29 SOUPS FEATURES 10 BAD FOOD 22 HER NAME IS MARGHERITA 26 MAPPING THE INGREDIENT 38 WHERE TO BEGIN


16

14


RECIPE LOCAL

B A R E K T E T D U P B E A & R Y

jamie iain genovese

S E RV 4 CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017

S

HO N E

PHOTOS BY

ED WITH COLD

M A CRE



RECIPE

I

’m… not the biggest fan of pears. They’re one of those fruit that you would have as a child and just find it to be ‘okay’. Not bad or anything, just not as good as grapes, watermelon, or peaches. I was hesitant to try this recipe out, but figured someone would be willing to take them off my hands after I was done. Talk about separation anxiety. These things come out of the oven tasting great; you spoon some hot pear and a little bit of cold cream, and… I’m not going to tell you how to eat, figure that out by yourself. Anyway, you probably want a list of ingredients to take with you to the shops, yeah? Alright, here it goes: 8 pears, peeled, halved, cored. 8 tbsp of primo unsalted butter cut into cubes about half an inch wide. 2 bay leaves, fresh. Salt. Kosher, not kosher, whatever. I like rough grains of fat salt like kosher, though. 5 sprigs of thyme. Honey. About 400-500ml worth. Double cream.

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Alright, now, what do you have to do? We’re going to need an oven, one that’s heated to about 200°C. Baking paper on a baking tray, with the pear halves on their… back? With the cut side up. Put a cube of butter on each pear half, and sprinkle some of those fat salt crystals onto everything, just not too much. Then throw on the thyme and bay leaves like you left the window open and some of your herb garden was blown into the kitchen and landed on your tray. Drizzle it all with honey. Bake the pears, and turn them over every quarter of an hour so you can coat them again with both honey and butter. Keep doing this until they’re tender, a little caramelised, and you really cannot wait anymore. This should be about an hour’s worth. Warm up a dish, this is where you’re going to put your pears down. Chuck some cream on that and call it a day. To say that this recipe is interesting is an understatement. The hot pears with the cold cream make for a lovely combination, the seasoning yields punchy sweet and salty f lavours that really make for a lovely dish in the hospitable winter home. I know, this is Malta, and our colder autumn and winter months are criminally short-lived, but for those strangely-cold days with good company you could always do with a dish like this.


RECIPE

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RECIPE

We eat with our eyes first, and it was only after having spent a couple of hours trying out the frijoles refritos (refried beans) recipe that I jotted down below that I realized that some food just tastes way better than it could ever look — seriously, it makes bigilla look telegenic. But this is the dish for the sports game (especially a long event, like the Superbowl), or the open-air dinner party.

ve 1 clo

8

es bacon ided | 4 slic v i d , n o i n o d white d and stemmed epper, seede choppe p l l g e 0 b 3 d 1 e r t) 1 whole (abou ilantro | an s | c e d b e c o n l) pint sp. mi se (optiona dried otija chee t | 2 tb l c s a d p s e t a u r r c oshe l â „ c up g 250g ts p. k nola oi a 1 c | r o eled cor n tbsp. c, pe i 1 l r a g

CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017


METHOD We’re chucking the beans, bell pepper, garlic, salt, and almost all the onion (except for one tablespoon) into a large pot. Pour water, generously, into the pot, enough to cover the party with a thumb’s depth (about two inches) worth of water. Now we bring in fire: set to medium heat, and bring it all to a low boil before than turning the volume down to simmer. Have some wine. We’re going to let that cook until the beans are soft, which should take about 2 hours. Once the beans are soft, the bell pepper looks at the time and takes its leave. The water follows, and we drain it, keeping about half a litre for ourselves, for later. Now, we need a pan or a skillet, maybe a wok. Put that on medium heat, fry the four slices of bacon to render the fat; you might want another glass for yourself as this might take ten minutes, then it’s time for bacon to go out for a breath of fresh air, while leaving its fat on the skillet. Oil arrives, as do the (now drained) beans, and the last tablespoon of onion. Make everything mix well, cook, and wait for bubbles to start showing up. This should take another glass of wine (Ten minutes? Yeah, maybe half a glass of wine, take it easy, buddy.) Now grab a ladle and take some of that bean juice we set aside in paragraph two, start introducing it to the skillet bit by bit as we slowly mix it all together and get those beans absolutely smashed (like we might be after drinking as much as we have). While cooking, make sure to season with that salt, chuck in those crispy bacon bits you have (I cheated and used a crisper while the beans were cooking). Then arrive the latecomers: the minced cilantro, the grated cotija cheese, but letting them in is up to you.


FEATURE

A CASE FOR BAD

(AND GOOD-BAD) FOOD

10 CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017


I

FEATURE

honest-to-God cannot say I am. In fact, I’ve so far tried to avoid discussing food as much as possible so that I don’t out myself to actual foodies as they cringe their way through a piece I’ve written. I don’t think I even like the term ‘foodie’ all that much, or rather what people think when they hear the word ‘foodie’. Don’t get me wrong, I like the finer things in life like many others, tacking on pomegranate jus to a dish description is enough to catch my eye and prompt an order, for I can be awfully shallow that way. But then, everyone would like good-tasting food, it’s paying for it that’s upsetting. That’s ordering food, and being waited on. But the food I eat at home is very often fresh, or organic, or in a marinade I might almost definitely be too lazy to make myself. I prefer gelato over ice cream, salad made from local produce or herbs from my balcony garden over pre-packaged iceberg, chocolate with cocoa butter and not the brightly packaged Wonka-Wannabes. I want my carbonara with guanciale, not slices of back bacon, my chicken free range and my soy sauce made from actual fermented miso, which I can use to quickly cook basmati rice with artisanal peach and lamb sausages, maybe with a peaty scotch, or a glass of Trappistes Rochefort 10 (a current and personal favourite indulgence).

WORDS BY

JAMIe IAIn GenoveSe

Sometimes. I like the canned & candied, de-seeded cherries you find in mobile kiosk-trucks that go on your factory-pink ice cream that identifies as ‘strawberry-flavoured’, I like the crusty deep-and-refried chicken in shops, street hot dogs after a night out, salty starch-strip fries you can get for a euro, dipped in mayonnaise and ketchup swirls. I like ‘Chinese’ food blasted with so much sugar and MSG that a cake made entirely out of San Marzano tomatoes would feel insecure. I like pizzas with leftover cheeses melted on that are so cheap you aren’t surprised it cost less than €5; with oregano, duh. That being said, there are territories of bad food that I’ll never have a soft spot for, such as: hockey puck burgers as thick as your fist, proudly branded ‘angus’ or whatever and sold for some eighteen euros, cooked all the way through until the middle is like chewy beach sand; cheesecakes served on soggy biscuit; chips gone rubbery, with insides so raw you could plant it in the ground and get some more; chicken so dry and unseasoned that it may make the pastiest of men look like James Bond or Rudyard Kipling fresh from an extra-diplomatic misadventure in the Horn of Africa. These are some of the ‘bad foods’ that I can find no joy in, up there with pre-shredded salad that’s mostly the pointless, water-wasting lettuce that gets tossed in with an otherwise normal meal but also managed to magically raise the cost by six to eight euros; or the Facebook video recipes that require my body weight’s worth of Oreo biscuits, inordinate types of cheese, or three pork-butts’ worth of bacon. But that’s another topic for another day. CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 11


FEATURE

This most-numbing exposition of some of my tastes, (stereo)typical and pedestrian as they may be, does actually serve a purpose. Besides humbling me before my idea of a ‘readership’, it also acts as a backdrop for the statement I am about to outline below. Bad food serves me in a way good food cannot. Well, maybe ‘bad’ and ‘good’ are the wrong terms. Low-brow? High-brow? I’m not sure what the dividing line is. I can enjoy those things equally, but I know the way they’re perceived by others is what changes the most — that and the price point. Either way, it has its time and place, it satisfies a craving that food with good intentions cannot. Too many moments in my life have slowly wired an importance into these ‘bad’ foods to outright oust them from my mind in favour of trendier, more sophisticated selections. And how awful it would be to bind enjoyment only to foods that I can’t properly pronounce correctly the first time, to be scared of a square of oily pizza, to recoil at a bucket of carb-loaded kettle-corn. How also equally awful it would be to only enjoy the cheap treat foods of my childhood, to only find solace in freezer-package chicken nuggets, or smiley fries, or bowls of sugar-bombed ‘breakfast’ cereal that I would eat at any time of day. Thankfully, these tastes passed, along with that weird bracket of teenage years where any washing of hair made it puff up into early-LiverpoolPaul McCartney and the slightest breeze could make facila spots sprout instantaneously. But what appreciation could I have of clear skin and shapely hair had I never had those slightly-anguished teenage years? What appreciation could I possibly have of the medium rare ground chuck burger had I never had the hockey puck, or of guanciale and parmeggiano had I never had the back bacon, and cream?

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Some people might call me out on that, “you can enjoy chocolate without having had Brussels sprouts”, they’d say. We only have a few meals a day for our life, so why waste time and money on bad food when we could just trust others and have ‘the good stuff’? It’s an understandable point; food is good because it’s good, not because you ate something less pleasant first. Well, maybe, but that’s coming from the privileged (and unimaginative) vantage point of having already tasted both, and knowing you’ll enjoy one option over another. That’s not fair, and besides, we’re known to reach plateaus in happiness and pleasure. Smarter people than I, such as St. Augustine and Eysenck, have described this as a hedonic treadmill, through which novelty momentarily elevates pleasure, only to inevitably drop and plateau as we adjust to them as a new ‘norm’. In other words, if you lived in some strange parallel world where there was no bad food, no suffering of any kind, if all you ever had was Tsar Imperial caviar, you would eventually find it to be a mediocre effort on behalf of the fish and altogether ‘nothing to write home about’. This of course ignores the fact that we would never agree on a vision of an ‘ideal’ world with good food, and no suffering; to some it’s jalapeños without the morning-after porcelain hangover, to others it’s one without mushrooms or parsley at all. There will never be, and can never be, a world without ‘bad’ food, because it isn’t binary, it’s a slope. Food we don’t like, food not cooked to perfection, is how we conversely identify the virtuous. A world without bad food is about as likely as a world without suffering: even if we all want it, we could never agree on what – exactly – that means. So, the next time you go out to eat and have a sub-par meal, try to remember it’s temporary, figure out why it is you’re so disappointed, and let it remind you of a better meal, one passed or one to come.



RECIPE

Kul,

ħa tiKber! WORDS BY

14 CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017

Alison CiliA Werdmölder


RECIPE

nd while I’m sure your Nanna, like mine, was a pro at a vast variety of dishes there is always that one whose smell alone triggers a flashback of hazy afternoon light coming through floral curtain and the low chattering of teleshopping as a background noise to the pots and pans, and jokes culminating in a hot plate of deliciousness in front of you. For me that mystical smell is what my family fondly and somewhat unimaginatively refer to as ‘Nanna sauce’. It’s a simple tomato based sauce that takes five minutes to make, and works great alone or as a base for something much more complicated. I’ve included the basic recipe as well as that of a favourite dish I use it in.

NANNA SAUCE

(SERVES 4-5)

INGREDIENTS Generous pours of extra virgin olive oil 4 cloves of garlic 1 large can of kunserva 2 heaped teaspoons of mild curry powder A pinch of mixed spice Salt & pepper Water as needed

METHOD Roughly chop the garlic and on a medium low heat — fry it in a lot of oil until golden. Add in freshly ground pepper at this point if you like, and once the initial sizzle dies down add in the kunserva. Fry the kunserva a little and add in the spices, mixing them well, then water down the sauce to your ideal consistency, I usually find refilling the empty can with water to be the perfect amount but it depends how I plan to use the sauce. Add salt to taste.

This sauce is the ideal accompaniment to ravjul with a little grated cheese on top, and can be kept sealed in the fridge for a few days if you’ve made too much. However on this occasion I’m using it to make another of my Nanna’s classic dishes; Stuffed Shells. CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 15


RECIPE STUFFED SHELLS

(SERVES 4-5)

INGREDIENTS 300g lumaconi pasta shells 500g ricotta 250g spinach 4 servings Nanna Sauce Large handful fresh parsley 2 eggs Garlic Salt Salt & Pepper Melting cheese for on top, I used mozzarella and mature cheddar

METHOD Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook the pasta somewhat more than half the recommended time so that it’s almost al-dente but mostly cooked. In the meantime finely chop the spinach and sautée in a pan on medium-heat until wilted, with some salt and pepper, the salt will help draw out some of the water from the spinach. Cool slightly then press the spinach between some paper towels once so as to avoid the mixture being very wet. Add it to a bowl along with the ricotta, eggs, and some garlic salt to taste, and stir to combine. Drain the pasta and set it aside until it is cool enough to handle. If you haven’t already, make the Nanna sauce, if it’s been refrigerated warm it up on the hob. At this point I chose to add extra water to loosen the sauce further than usual since the half cooked pasta will be soaking up some of the liquid. I also added a handful of finely chopped parsley. Hold the cooled pasta shells open with one hand, and using a sandwich bag with a corner snipped off fill them with the ricotta and spinach mixture. Set them carefully in a baking dish and pour Nanna sauce over them, trying not to disturb the shells too much (no mixing!) because the filling will fall out. Sprinkle cheese and some more parsley on top and place in an oven at 180 degrees for about 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the size of your pasta shells. At this point I like to set the oven on it’s highest heat and broil for a couple of minutes, keeping the oven door ajar, so as to give the melted cheese a lovely crispy crust. Leave to cool as long as you can wait, and eat!

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RECIPE

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RECIPE

HEALTHY

- GRANOLA BARS Preparation Time: 20 minutes

200g Good Earth Pitted Dates 200g Good Earth Oat Flakes 100g Good Earth Roasted Almonds 2 tbsp (24g) Good Earth Chia Seeds 250g Whole Earth Smooth peanut butter 160g honey

Total Time: 40 minutes

Serves: 10

Line an 20cm square baking pan with baking paper. Set aside. Process dates in a food processor until small bits remain (about 1 minute). It should form a “dough� like consistency. Toast your oats in a 180 degree oven for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden brown. Place oats, almonds, chia seeds and dates in a large mixing bowl - set aside. Warm honey and peanut butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir and pour over oat mixture and then mix, breaking up the dates to disperse throughout. Once thoroughly mixed, transfer to the baking dish . Press down firmly until uniformly f lattened. Cover with parchment or plastic wrap, and let firm up in fridge or freezer for 15-20 minutes. Remove bars from pan and chop into 10 even bars. Store in an airtight container for up to a few days.

CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 19


RECIPE

n e k n u r D t ti

e h g a p S

“Who’s fast, easy, and full of wine Probably someone, but I have no idea. What’s fast, easy, and full of wine? That, I can answer: Spaghetti all’ubriaco. Oh, and by the end of it, the spaghetti turns purple. If you aren’t sold yet, I’m confused; get in touch and make your case. All in all, the dish takes about 20 minutes to make. So, once you prep, cook, plate, and eat, you’d have just enough time to listen to the entire Chet Baker Sings album. Play that, if you have it. The ingredients list is pretty straightforward. Here, look: Olive oil A couple of cloves of chopped garlic Red Chili f lakes, not too much of course, somewhere around an eighth of a teaspoon. That’s tiny! Kosher salt, quarter (¼) teaspoon should be enough, but season to taste. A quarter (¼) cube of beef bouillon Oregano, finely chopped, 2 teaspoons Finely chopped parsley, though I didn’t use any since I loathe the stuff. A bottle of wine. (Or two, if you want a glass with the dish)

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RECIPE

METHOD Great, you’ve done your shopping, it’s mid-week, and you really need to just put something warm in your stomach and have a red. Pot of water, large. Bring that to a boil. In a deep skillet, add the olive oil, the chopped garlic, the kosher salt, and that pinch of chili f lakes. Heat should be medium high, and stir it now and then. After about 2/3 minutes of that, the garlic should be soft and about to brown. This is when you (carefully) pour the red wine. Make sure it doesn’t splash and ruin your favourite t-shirt (or, do what I do and cook shirtless) and bring it all to a boil. Add salt to the boiling water in the pot, to season. Add spaghetti, cook until 2 minutes pass and it’s just slightly softer. Once those two minutes are up, use tongs to transfer the spaghetti to the skillet (tongs to picking up water), and then add the beef bouillon, a teaspoon of oregano, and cook. Stir occasionally until the spaghetti is al dente or a little soft, so anywhere between 6-8 minutes. Move it all to the plate, top it with remaining oregano and parsley. Eat. Serve. Do it all, you should have about 20 minutes to drink your wine, eat your dish, and wash up..

PHOTO BY

jAmIe IAIn genOveSe

CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 21


FEATURE

HER NAME IS WORDS BY

t first glance, it had something grotesque about itself, something repelling. I wasn’t sure if one of my friends truly recommended it to me or if the address even was correct. Maybe, my suspicion was raised by the wooden door frame which looked older than the Grand Master’s palace entrance, or the Italian flag that was covered with a thick layer of grey dust, the pink rubbish bin placed below the only tiny piece of wood where you could put two pints of beer, at maximum, and the front sign that glorified the whole conception. It reminded me of one of the many surrealistic paintings I had seen before. Looking at this picture for a while I even started to anticipate that the Italian flag will begin to melt and go down the wooden frame towards saint Paul street. the place I am speaking about is one of those places that live on its reputation. otherwise, people would pass it, probably, without even stopping; nine times out of ten. La Vecchia Taranto is not about the looks — but experience. From the first step until the last bite. Inside, an Italian accent greeted me as I entered straight into an area where the biggest part is occupied by the few square metres that is the kitchen. there was a chef trapped inside a small box which was exposed to the clientele’s eyes. Here you can witness, if you want, how a pizza is prepared from a to Z. to play it safe, I always ask for a pizza Margherita. For me, it is a kind of indicator which can tell me if a place is capable of producing pizzas worth recommendation. In a high-quality pizza, all parts are as one and the taste represents the perfect balance between the toppings and the dough. When the order was placed I walked one step away, curiously anticipating what will happen next. the chef started from dough; which was already prepared into small rolls for six pizzas and placed on a surface covered with flour. slowly, the firm hands of the chef pull and stretch the dough, creating the round form famously associated with the image of pizza. (technically, dough can be various shapes; It doesn’t need, necessarily, to be round. It can be square or rectangular; it just depends on the origins of your 22 CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017

Mantas sakas stockus


FEATURE

Margherita ordered pizza.) With the stronger pulls and stretches, little snowflakes of flour jumped into the air covering the wooden surface just in front of me. salt, Buffalo mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and a few dashes of olive oil are the main ingredients topped on the dough. there shouldn’t be more than three. What a chef adds has to complement the other ingredients. together they have to taste like a well-tuned orchestra sounds. a bit too much or a bit too little and you will sense that something is not quite right, very quickly. If the ingredients play well together, then you will get an experience which will transform into a recommendation to all of your friends. there is nothing more important than word of mouth. trust and accountability builds reputation, and without it places die off faster than clothes dry in the summer sun. a thick layer of sauce on a pizza will affect the crust of the dough. Minimalism is essential when it comes to a great pizza Margherita. It’s best to be sparing with the sauce and not to go too mad on extras to avoid overloading the base and making it soggy. after a few touches from the chef the pizza was finished. the last and the most important stage of the process, baking, was all that separated me from finally tasting it. as soon as the well heated oven was opened the place got few degrees higher and the additional drops of sweat appeared on the chef’s forehead. With a quick movement he took the wooden pizza peel and in a matter of a second I saw my pizza behind the small oven door. the same moment the pizza was taken out, the scent of melted cheese mixed with tomatoes permeated the kitchen; you could even see the waves of heat coming out from it, warping the air. My pizza was placed inside a take away box. Fresh basil leaves served as the last touch followed by the pizza cutter wheel. In La Vecchia Taranto you have two options: stay or take away. the choice is yours but, at least once, go for take away and end your adventure sitting on st. Barbara’s Bastion wall under the shade of a tree. P.s. Don’t forget to ask for napkins. CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 23


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CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 25


FEATURE

26 CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017


FEATURE

I

was six-years-old. I bit into a funny apple with the stalk-end sticking out like a white sheet on a trick-or-treater. The funny apple is soft, sweet, and not at all what I was expecting. Lovely, at first, but only in the smallest of doses. Its tree is the home to the first gift of The Twelve Days of Christmas — the partridge. The pear. Late summer, early autumn, this is the best time to harvest pears, harvesting them twice before they ripen, and on the day they turn ripe; keeping pears in circulation much longer. This makes me rethink how popular I think pears are, after all, about eighteen million tonnes of pears are produced in China alone, though they have the absolute lion share of production with the rest of its producers never hitting the million-tonne mark. The genus Pyrus is from the Rosaceae family, and trees or shrub from this genus can be referred to as ‘pears’. Of course, this is also the name of the flower-fruit, the one that inspired the term ‘pearshaped’ as applied to a human figure. The fancier way of saying ‘pear-shaped’ is ‘pyriform’, in case you’re at a party and really feel like killing the vibe with boring tidbits of the etymological loan-

word paper trail. You could follow it up with how nashi pears look more like apples than pears, or how there’s over 3,000 variations of pear fruit. The pear’s ground zero is the old world, the coastal and temperate areas in the north of Africa, the west of Europe, and parts of Asia. They’re largely deciduous, though some oddballs in Asia are evergreens. The former variety being able to tolerate colder temperatures than the latter, year-round variety. Odds are that the fruit has been with us for a while, with evidence of it being eaten in pre-historic times, in pre-historic Zurich. It was also cultivated by the Romans, and eaten raw or cooked much like apples would be (another fun fact: apple pie used to be a savoury meal, with a filling of onions and eggs, in the 18th century). They grow wildly in France and England, and the French turn it into perry, a kind of pear cider. The Chinese have been cultivating it for three millennia. There’s something there, even if the fruit isn’t quite suited to my tastes, but there’s a hundred ways to skin a cat, and you’ll find a recipe that comes highly recommended in the pages of Cibus.

CIBUS | oCtoBER 2017 27



RECIPE

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RECIPE

Yes, soups. The autumnal cliché. It’s the food equivalent of Miranda Priestley’s line from The Devil Wears Prada; “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.” Clichés are clichés for a reason. Platitudes, even banal ones, can be powerful. To cite David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to the Kenyon class of 2005, “[…] the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. […]”. As for soups in winter? “[…] This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth.” The terrible truth David Foster Wallace refer to is not about soup, it is indeed about something far more important, but it proves true in this instance as well. As the cliché goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY

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jamie iain genovese



RECIPE

CURRIED CARROT SOUP INGREDIENTS 150g unsalted butter 150g onions, chopped 2 garlic cloves, crushed 500g carrots, peeled and chopped into small pieces 1 tsp cumin seeds ½ tsp Madras curry powder 300ml/½ pint chicken stock (or vegetable stock) 1 bouquet garni 1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander, to serve

This lightly spiced carrot soup couldn't be any simpler to make, yet it makes a delicious supper on a cold winter's evening.

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METHOD Melt the butter in a saucepan and sweat the onion, garlic and carrots, with a pinch of salt, for 5-6 minutes, or until softened. Meanwhile toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan until fragrant. Add the toasted cumin seeds and Madras curry powder to the vegetables and cook a further 2-3 minutes. Add the stock, bouquet garni and 500ml/18f l oz water and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Remove the bouquet garni, then blend the soup in a blender until smooth. Pass through a sieve into a clean saucepan and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. To serve, ladle the soup in serving bowls and sprinkle with chopped fresh coriander.



RECIPE

Pascual Yogikids Yogurt Banana With straWBerrY Flavour

MODENA BALSAMIC VINEGAR

The Modena Balsamic vinegar enhances the flavour of meats, especially veal and duck; it is an excellent ingredient in vinaigrette dressings for smoked fish. This balsamic vinegar is made in the region of Modena (Italy). The quality certification (PGI) guarantees its origin and a minimum of 2 months in oak barrel. Its distinctive taste and mild sourness appeal to both people who like vinegar and people who do not. Follow us on Facebook to find out more: www.facebook.com/BorgesMT

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Kids need a variety of nutritious foods and regular exercise to stay healthy. However, staying healthy is also essential for your child’s happiness. From a young age, talk about how nutritious foods will make them grow big and strong, and also provide the fuel and energy they need to learn and play.Yogikids is designed for children from one year of age, and that is why special care has been taken in developing a nutritious product. Pascual Yogikids Yoghurt Banana With Strawberry Flavour is a delicious health snack for your growing child, a good Source of Calcium which promotes the growth and development of bones and teeth. It is also high in Vitamin A & D which helps strengthens the immune system. Pascual Products are delicious and nutritious! They may be either chilled or stored at room temperature, and can be taken anywhere which makes them an ideal solution for snacks and lunch breaks! In addition, they are made with Pascual Milk and real fruits. Pack Pascual Products in your kids’ lunch box to make sure they have a healthy, happy, meal!



RECIPE ALPRO ALMOND UNROASTED UNSWEETENED

A beautiful fresh nut taste combined with a delicate floral aroma, it’s seriously delicious! This drink is easy like a summer breeze. Thanks to its fresh almond taste, Alpro Almond Unsweetened Unroasted is great as a drink or on its own, but also perfect on your cereal or oats, giving them something a little bit extra. BENEFITS: • 100% plant-based • Sugar free • 13 kcal per 100ml • Low in fat • Source of vitamin E and antioxidants* • * A varied, balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle are recommended for good health

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FEATURE

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FEATURE

WORDS BY

Danny Coleiro

The students in my class fell into three broad categories. There were a handful to whom cooking came easy, like the guy who moulded a near-perfect peacock out of butter and a fistful of asparagus spears on his first day in the teaching kitchen, for no particular reason other than that he could. right on the other end of the spectrum was another small - and rapidly getting smaller - group of aspiring chefs who would suddenly and painfully realise, halfway through chopping a carrot, that they’d accidentally separated their thumb from the rest of their hand. The sole raison d’etre of these unfortunate few was to make it out alive with a certificate to prove that they could walk through a kitchen without passing out from the heat and drowning in a pot of soup.

and then, because that’s how things tend to go with me, i abruptly got tired of the hustle and bustle of the commercial kitchen, and went on to do something completely different for the rest of my life. Today, i cook at home, and it’s a lot easier to keep my wife and two children happy than it is a restaurant full of hungry diners. My wife is not a particularly fussy eater anyway, and as for the kids… well… one of them is always going to moan about what’s on their plate - they take turns, apparently - but as their father i can threaten them with the confiscation of the PlayStation if they don’t eat their dinner; a tactic which is pretty useless when attempted on a customer complaining about the food in a posh restaurant. It’s become hip, and

something that is done with flair and a flourish. Today, every other chef is a celebrity who gets to swear profusely at everyone else because he can make peacocks out of butter and a fistful of asparagus spears with one hand while the other reinvents veal.

By far the biggest category, however, was the one between these two extremes, to which i, and the majority of my classmates, belonged. By the end of the course, we would be able to quickly and efficiently make an ‘osso buco’ or a ‘saltimbocca’ that would definitely encourage a table of two to come back the following week as a party of eight, but we were never going to reinvent the… er… veal, or get to swear profusely at the guests on our own televised cooking show. Which was okay, because we swore profusely at each other in the kitchen instead.

a couple of years whizzed by, because that’s what time does when you’re having fun, and then the course was suddenly over. i walked out into the world with a diploma in Food Preparation and Production and slid it casually across the desk of every potential employer who wanted to know if i had one. For about five years, i worked in various local restaurants and hotels, where i learned which of the rules i’d learned at school i could break, twist or completely ignore, and why i should choose to do so.

i think i’m a far more creative cook today than i ever was when i was actually, as it were, a cook. in my kitchen at home, i have the freedom to cut corners and cheat and substitute one thing with another or leave it out completely if i’m not in the mood to pop down to the shops to get it. i can use octopus out of a can instead of fresh if i can’t be bothered to slice my way through an army of tentacles. i can use whichever ‘spaghe’ i like ‘tti’, ‘ttini’ or ‘ttoni’ - and no one’s going to complain that it isn’t what they ordered. i can use green olives instead of black if i want to, and no one’s going to wave a menu description under my nose.

Besides, commercial cooking has changed over the years, and i think i’ve been left behind. it’s become a performance art. it’s become hip, and something that is done with flair and a flourish. Today, every other chef is a celebrity who gets to swear profusely at everyone else because he can make peacocks out of butter and a fistful of asparagus spears with one hand while the other reinvents veal. not that he would, of course, because butter, asparagus spears and veal are so yesterday and can actually be found on this planet, and that’s just ‘meh’. Today, pork is pulled and buns are black and lasagne is deconstructed and mason jars have replaced plates. Today, food can’t be eaten until it finds itself in the background of twenty-seven selfies and has had the hell hashtagged out of it first… Today, i wouldn’t know where to begin.

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FEATURE

The cooking shows on TV are partly responsible for this food revolution, especially those competitive ones where they have teams or individuals vying against each other in the kitchen for the prestigious title of ‘Top Chopper’ or some such, and prize money of half a million dollars. There’s always some sort of ridiculous ‘mystery bag’ round, which is impossible to take even remotely seriously… “So… you’ve got a trombone, a punnet of raspberries, a potato, a tub of petroleum jelly, a giant octopus and a rechargeable alkaline battery! On your marks… Get set… Go!” … and yet, somehow, it is taken seriously, and so another food fad begins. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, or a good thing. It’s just a thing. It’s just not my thing. My thing, as I’ve been subtly hinting at since way back up there, is a nice bowl of spaghetti and octopus. Incidentally, the last time I had this in a restaurant, the octopus was served whole and was glaring at me angrily from the top of its spaghetti throne, which I suppose is pretty cool, especially if you happen to be a Star Wars fan, but to be honest I prefer meals that don’t require a shower and a trip to the dry-cleaner’s when you’re done. My recipe is old school. It’s one that I stole from my brother-in-law, who learned it from his mum, who learned it from hers, and it doesn’t require any particular flair or flourish, just fire and food, and the careful application of one to the other… …starting with five or six cloves of garlic, nicely chopped and fried off in a pan with a handful of fresh basil leaves. If you haven’t

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got fresh, cheat, and use dried. When the garlic turns golden, add the chopped octopus and carry on frying for another two minutes. Then add one cup of wine (red or white - it’s up to you) for every kilo of octopus you’re using. Add a pinch of pepper, and let it simmer away until the wine has reduced. In the meantime, you can make a peacock out of butter and asparagus. Or lunar kale. Whatever. By the time you’re done, the wine will have reduced and the sauce thickened, so… …add a couple of tins of whole peeled tomatoes, two or three tablespoons of tomato paste, two tablespoons of sugar, as many chopped black olives as will make your day, four or five bay leaves, a fish cube, and salt and pepper to taste. Let it carry on simmering while you boil the salted water for the spaghetti… or spaghettini, or spaghettoni. When the spaghetti is halfway through its cooking time, add a ladle of the water to the sauce. Turn up the heat, and let it bubble all over the kitchen until the spaghetti’s done. When the sauce thickens, you’re good to go. And there you have it… a Maltese classic that both my kids actually like on the same days and at the same time. It’s barely worth a selfie, and will probably never be hashtagged or get its own TV show, but I swear profusely that it’s delicious down to the last forkful. What you do with the trombone, however, is up to you. You’ll probably need to go to catering school to figure that one out. Me… I wouldn’t know where to begin.




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