Have you noticed how we Maltese pig ourselves sick? Whether it’s a birthday occasion, festa preparations or a football club celebrating a move up the league table, it’s become the custom to hold a majjalata. And it seems the majjalata or ħanżirata has come to stay.
The cooking process is simple. A piglet is bought from a reputable butcher, though some prefer to slash the pig’s neck themselves. Apparently, the squeals make it more exciting. The pig is then cleaned and stuffed with even more meat – minced meat garnished with eggs, cheese, fruit and herbs.
Next it’s roasted for 12 hours on an open spit in the middle of the village square.The smell of singed pork, pleasant for some but disgusting for others, floats upwards and spreads throughout the town or village streets. It whets the appetite of some and upsets the stomach of others.
Later that evening, the bright red, yellow, blue and green metal tables and chairs of the local club are taken out and arranged around the spit. Soon, those who have paid to take part in the feast arrive and settle down full of expectation. The din of blaring hip hop rhythms help get the crowd into the mood for the tribal food sharing.
Finally, the pig is declared cooked but it’s not yet time to eat. Someone lectures about the different cuts of the pork pointing at each part with a terrifying looking knife. (Watch on www.youtube.com Federicus Rex falconry club majjalata.)
By then the waiting people are feeling ravenous. So, one of the organisers starts to hack at the pig and eager hands receive the chunks of pork and shovel it into their mouths. Dishes of roasted potatoes and coleslaw dunked in gooey mayonnaise are available for those who want to eat more.
You could say that’s not as bad as what happens in the EpicMealTime dinners, which you can also view on YouTube. It’s not as grotesque as “the bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig” where the stuffing for the pig consists of a series of five-boned and flattened birds separated by layers of sausage stuffing . The 4.5 kilos of bacon used to give the pig a better flavour and the final glaze of Dr Pepper and dripping butter ensure a crunchy skin and 79,046 calories.
And it’s not like what happens at the Heart Attack Grill they’ve openend in the US. There, patrons can have a quadruple burger smothered in cheese with “all-you-can-eat”-chips, fried in pure lard. We haven’t come to the stage where waitresses dressed as nurses wheel patrons to their car door to reward overeating.
Fortunately, such extreme pig-outs are not yet so common in Malta. But majjalatas are becoming a ritual in more and more villages this summer. The result? A look at the people at the beach will show an alarming number of very obese persons. And these include children. If we are not careful we’ll soon overtake the Americans as the country with the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
What is happening to us? We seem to have lost our temperance. Have we come to the point where we can only be happy if we stuff ourselves sick? At present there is a famine in the horn of Africa where six million people are starving. You might say Africa is not your fault. That is true.
However, isn’t it time for us to stop this out-of-control eating frenzy? There’s something obscene about people scratching for berries to survive when we’re bursting out of our own bodies. Every single person is a precious resource for our islands. So why are we killing ourselves through overeating?