Christmas comes early at the Savina Centre in Gozo. Throughout the summer months, the team of ‘Savineurs’ was busy creating new recipes and specialised packaging for the festive season offering.

Launched in early October, Savina’s 2013 Catalogue boasts a range of more than 150 exclusive products.

Since its debut in 2006 the Savina Brand has succeeded in constantly creating products inspired by Mediterranean culture, traditions and delicacies. Bespoke hampers, original hamper ideas and own-logo personalisation are also on the Savina agenda.

This year’s star Savina delicacy is bound to be the traditional air-dried sausages. In the olden days people preserved and stored their foods in very ingenious ways. Pork sausage making and drying was a homemade art.

Intestinal lining was carefully washed and sanitised and then filled with the coarse minced meat and other ingredients according to the family’s secret recipe. Then the zalzett was hung in wells for some days for preservation. The humidity and the cool temperature created the right conditions for the meat to lose moisture and aided the friendly bacteria in the meat to cure faster. These sausages were then left to hang for 20 to 30 days to dry on the qanniċċ or in some other cool airy place, usually in windows behind wooden lattices.

Savina Creations Ltd managing director John Magro recalls how his grandmother used to cure and dry her own sausages.

“These sausages are such a family favourite that this year I decided to share them with our Savina clients, albeit in a more controlled and hygienic environment,” he explains. Savina’s sausages are made with 100 per cent choice shoulder Maltese pork for the best taste and quality. The meat is seasoned with a blend of traditional herbs and spices and air-dried in controlled chambers to mature slowly for added flavour.

Savina offers two types of sausage: the traditional zalzetta, based on the recipe and methodology of our forefathers, and the zalzettun, a thicker version of the sausage more closely resembling Italian salami and the Spanish salchichon.

Besides the traditional zalzetta spiced with coriander and coarse ground black pepper, this craft food can also be savoured with Gozitan-grown fennel and white wine or spiced with chilli.

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