Editorial

It is sadly very common for us Maltese to be either unaware of our cultural identity or have an inferiority complex about it. Nowhere is this trait more evident than in the gastronomic field. While we happily ride on the rich influences of our former rulers in so far as the visual arts go, Maltese gastronomy is generally given low priority. This is rather strange when one considers how avidly the Maltese take to "typical" restaurants when abroad; whether sampling duck cooked in 1,001 different ways in Bordeaux or stuffing themselves with all sorts of Greek dips and mezès.

It is obvious to any seasoned traveller that this tiny island seriously lacks truly Maltese restaurants.

Interviewed by The Times in connection with a lecture in Malta by the author of a book dealing with Sicilian food, Julian Sammut, a professional and very popular restaurant owner, representing the Fondazzjoni Fuklar - which strives to promote the Maltese food culture, for the umpteenth time expressed his dismay at the fact that tourists are served frozen salmon in hotels in the height of the lampuki season.

There is interesting and affordable literature about Malta's very own gastronomy and such books - at least a selection of them - ought to be readily available in our kitchens, if anything to help us better appreciate the repertoire of dishes served for hundreds of years in Malta.

While many of us are lucky to eat typical Maltese food practically every day in the home, this cuisine is, generally speaking, unavailable in restaurants. Wonderful dishes like stuffed globe artichokes, tongue stew, kusksu, lampuki pie, and that veritable queen of pasta dishes, proper timpana are usually very hard to come by. To link Malta's timpana with Sicily, all one has to do is read Lampedusa's wonderful Gattopardo and be enticed by the very smell of a dish almost identical to our timpana being served in the Prince of Salina's Donnafugata dining room.

The worst sin is committed during the festa season when miles of stalls do brisk trade selling hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza and chips. As Mr Sammut observed in his interview no hobza mimlija or ftira biz-zejt is to be had; let alone mqarrun or ross fil-forn! Visitors and non-Maltese speakers may not understand what we are talking about here, but give it to them on a plate, literally, and they will certainly become life-long addicts to such Maltese "delicacies".

The bottom line is that, given the way typical Maltese food is being sidelined, future generations are being deprived of all that was good and wholesome about our cuisine.

While there are excellent restaurants on the island serving local fish cooked to a T, many fall short when serving salads and accompanying vegetables. Where can one eat stuffed tomatoes, ful bit-tewm or baked fennel except in the home of some traditional cook?

The usual de rigueur restaurant salad is a little bowl of undressed chopped (not torn) lettuce covered with two slices of tomato if you are lucky and topped by a raw onion ring with an olive in the middle; vegetables are usually colourless and overboiled; totally pathetic and inadequate; a mortal sin in a country where vegetables are tasty and luscious and may be cooked according to rich traditional recipes. Wouldn't a salad of Jerusalem artichokes or qarabaghli biz-zalza pikkanti be far more tempting and utterly delicious?

The effort put in by Fondazzjoni Fuklar deserves all-round support, especially by chefs, food and beverage managers and hotel and restaurant owners.