David, my green grocer, is selling globe artichokes at the price of €1 for four. That’s very cheap for this time of year. How come? “Ħeq. Spiċċat il-borma,” he said. By which he meant no one is cooking any more.

People don’t seem to have the time to prepare food that is not ready after two minutes in a microwave. Which means that sadly, no one seems to be cooking qaqoċċ mimli – stuffed artichokes – anymore.

I love qaqoċċ (don’t you just love the sound of the word?). Because it is seasonal – a Lent vegetable as I call it – and it means it is something I can look forward to the rest of the year.

According to Matty Cremona’ book The Way We Ate, our artichokes go back a long way. Even the way they are sown is particularly unusual: the farmer uses the previous year’s plants rather than seeds. The old and shrivelled artichoke roots are stored from the previous year’s crops, cut up and soaked in water and then planted out.

In fact, artichokes have been around for quite a long time. Writer Jean Quintin d’Autun remarked on it when he was here in 1536, saying they were growing in Malta in great abundance – and that was more or less the same time when the French and the Italians cultivated the artichoke.

Cremona says the Maltese word qaqoċċ corresponds to cacocciu in the Sicilian dialect, which indicates the very strong link between Malta and Sicily at the time of the Knights.

It also means that we’ve been eating it for about 500 years. Which I find exciting because it means we’ve been passing on the recipe for the same meal for centuries, giving us, as Cremona puts it, a “tenuous link with our past… almost like having lunch with our ancestors”.

David is right though. Bit by bit the qaqoċċ mimli is dying. I only know of two people who cook it – my mother and my sister – and as they’re family they don’t count in straw polls.

Somehow I don’t think the reason for its demise is the time it takes to cook it (20 minutes preparation time; 45 minutes cooking time). Joseph Galea, managing director at Lamb Brand, last year told The Sunday Times of Malta that homemade food is facing a tough battle against convenience food: “It seems there’s no time for recipe books, there’s no time to plan the food, but there is time to spend an hour on Facebook or watch drama on TV.”

And it’s not just in Malta. Journalist Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times that the average American spends 20 minutes a day on food preparation – less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of Chopped or Masterchef or whatever else is showing on the Food Network.

I can’t bear to think what food on the dinner table will be like in 2024

But we cannot blame it all on television. Food researcher Harry Balzer explains why people are turning more and more to prepared food: “A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice.”

I can’t bear to think what food on the dinner table will be like in 2024. Perhaps the only thing that would save the borma, is if more and more people – men and women – are encouraged to work from home. From experience, this is much more productive work-wise, and it gives people the flexibility and opportunity to time-manage their cooking (I’m writing this while the qaqoċċa is ticking).

One thing just occurred to me though: could it be no one has the time to sit down and eat qaqoċċ mimli? Because, let’s face it, you need to eat it leave by leaf, scraping the artichoke and the bits of stuffing with each bite. It’s messy, it’s delicious and best enjoyed when you take your time to eat it.

Let’s find time for that, and let’s save this qaqoċċa dish of ours.

Stuffed artichokes (The Chetcuti way)

Ingredients:
4 large artichokes
For the stuffing:
3 chopped cloves of garlic
5 tbs chopped parsley
5 chopped anchovy fillets
2 tbs chopped capers
4 chopped olives
Olive oil
Freshly ground pepper and salt

Method:

Wash the artichokes well, cut the stalk, hold the bottom firmly in your hand and hit it against a firm surface so the leaves open up slightly.

Mix in all the stuffing ingredients in a bowl. With a teaspoon push a little stuffing in between the leaves.

Place the stuffed artichokes in a saucepan half-filled with salted water.

Drizzle artichokes with some olive oil and vinegar.

Bring to boil, then lower the heat and leave to cook for about 45 minutes until tender.

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Twitter: @KrisChetcuti