Cooking and Tasting popular Maltese dishes

Cooking, tasting, and exploring Malta’s dishes is the perfect way to experience the heart of Maltese culture, and in this video, we take you on a delicious journey through the island’s most popular traditional recipes.

In this video, we show you local favourites like Octopus Stew, Qarabali Mimli (Baked Stuffed Marrows), Stuffat tal-Fenek (Rabbit Stew), Ftira and we will also taste pastizzi. Discover the rich flavours, fresh ingredients, and cultural stories behind each dish, and bring a true taste of Malta to your own kitchen.

So, while you pack for your next adventure in Malta, make sure you also pack your appetite.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll see:
1️⃣ Cooking and tasting some of the most popular Maltese dishes
2️⃣ Popular places to visit in Gozo
3️⃣ How a young man from Gozo became award-winning chef

🕒 Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:33 Buying ingredients for popular Maltese dishes
01:03 Farming in Malta and Gozo
02:00 How to cook Rabbit Stew (Stuffat tal-Fenek)
04:20 How to cook Stuffed Marrows (Qarabali Mimli)
06:07 How to cook Octopus Stew (Stuffat Tal-Qarnit)
08:44 How to make Maltese Ftira
10:15 Tasting the best Pastizzi in Gozo
11:54 Cittadella, Victoria, Gozo
12:15 Dwejra, Gozo
12:56 Wied il-Mielah Window, Gozo
14:22 Aqua Restaurant in New York
15:04 Proud to be Maltese

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I am Giovann and I’m a Chef from this
beautiful island of Gozo. And today, I’m going to take you on a food journey of
this paradise of an island. Let’s go! Now we are in Xaghra, the village of
temples and windmills. This local butcher in Xaghra, gets the freshest
rabbits from local farmers. And this is the best way to get rabbit to cook the
Maltese rabbit stew. This is the best octopus you can get! My love for food is coming from when I
was really young. I grew up on a farm and my dad is a farmer and we always had
fresh produce. So this is where my love for food is coming from. We always had
potatoes, tomatoes, in summer watermelons and melons. Being a chef and working
with fresh produce, takes me right back to my roots. One of the things I love
the most about being in my family’s fields is that I can have fresh local
organic produce and I can take it from the farm to the table.
Now let’s go cook! So now we have all the ingredients that
we gathered from around the island. And I’m in my mom’s kitchen here where I
grew up and where I have a lot of childhood memories. And we’re going to
cook octopus stew, rabbit stew and we’re going to do Qarabali Mimli (stuffed
marrows). Let’s go! So here we’re going to blanch the
octopus. We’re going to give it that cook, and we’re going to slow cook it
for around 40 minutes. So, with the rabbit, we need to cut it,
butcher it down into small pieces, and then we’re going to give it a good sear.
Okay. So, we’re going to, we are going to first sort of
fry it on hot oil to have that nice brown color. Okay. Before we stew it.
The rabbit is quite a soft bone, so it’s quite easy to to cut. You just need to cut it into small pieces so then it cooks nicely. So
rabbit you need to cook it. The stew needs to slow cook first after you
sear it. Then you need to slow cook it for a few hours so the meat is
nice and tender. There’s a lot of variations of cooking rabbit. I think
one of them that’s most famous is that with the sauce with the stew with the
sauce of the stew you make spaghetti. We’re going to make sort of a beef
ragu first and then we’re going to stuff the marrow with it. So I add onion and garlic. So now I’m going to add the ground beef
for the filling of the stuffed marrow for the Qarabali Mimli. Onion and garlic here. Some garlic.
We use the same pan so that all the flavor. So a big part of the stew traditionally
is bay leaf, in Maltese weraq tar-rand which is a tree and is a very aromatic
herb let’s say and we just put the leaf in just take the flavor and then we
take it out. So for the stuffed marrows, we cut
the top off and then we remove the flesh so we can fill inside with the with beef filling. We’re going to add tomato paste
conserva. So, I’m going to put the rabbit back in. And now we’re going to deglaze the pan
and the next step of the rabbit stew with my father’s wine. So in summer, end of summer, we make a batch of wine and then it will last all winter. Well, it should last all
winter. I don’t know. So, now we’re going to leave the rabbit to cook
slowly, and then we’re going to add chopped tomato, bay leaf and peas.
And we’ll leave it to cook for a few hours. We’re going to add the
chopped tomato. We’re going to add the bay leaves. Now, we’re going to add the potato. We’re going to add green peas. And black pepper. And now we’re going to let it simmer. So, I’m going to cut the octopus into
small pieces and then I’m going to start the stew. Olive oil always. These capers we harvested
them last year and then we pickled them in brine. Okay. Which I picked them with my dad. and then brine them with my mom and we’re going to use them now for our octopus stew. Come and smell. This is literally this Island’s best
produce from the land and the sea in one pan. The octopus stew is cooking. We’re going
to add some potato. We’re going to let it simmer. So, we cooked the beef sauce for the filling of the marrows, the stuffed marrows. Now we’re going to add some cheese. Gozo sheep cheese. Grated. Dried and grated. Okay. We’re going to add it. Yeah.
And we’re going to add two eggs as well to combine everything. Now we have the marrow. Hallow marrow. Now we’re going to fill it. Now we’re going to bake it in the oven.
That’s it. The next step for the stuffed marrows is
that we’re going to put them in a casserole. Okay. And to bake them in
the oven, I put some onion, some tomato. I’m going to put some wine. Red wine.
Yeah. Okay. And then we’re going to put the stuffed marrows inside. Close them and bake them in the oven.
Ftira. Basically, we have savoury bread ring with sesame seeds. And what
do we do? We make a sandwich out of it. Yeah. With conserva, which is tomato
paste, tomato paste. And the best one is from Gozo the Kunserva tal- bott il-blu.
There’s loads of variations of it, but the best ones for me is with conserva
tomato paste, tuna, anchovies, peppered sheep cheese and capers and olives. Let’s do it. This we used to when I was young, my mom used to do a lot of these and we take them to the beach with us or even
when I go to the fields with my father we used to take them with us and have it
will be our lunch. Olive oil, we have tuna, you can’t miss anything in Ftira. All these ngredients are important. You have
anchovies, some onion capers some olives,
some peppered cheese, and that’s it. Now we are going to Pjazza San Gorge
where we can find a lot of pastizzerias and cafés. And as a child, I used to
go there with my mom while she was shopping. And I admire the church, the
the pjazza and the people having their tea and coffee. So we’re going to get the best pastizzi in Gozo. We have the ricotta pastizzi and the peas
pastizzi. Okay, these are the two most traditional pastizzi in Malta and Gozo. My favorite one is the pea one. Let’s have a go at it. The best thing about pastizzi is that
they are made with lemonated dough and we use lard to make all the layers. And
with this with this process, it makes it so flaky and so tasty. For a lot of Maltese and Gozitan people,
pastizzi is a childhood memory because it brings loads of memories from when we’re
young and having them as a snack in the morning or in the afternoon with a cup
of coffee or a cup of tea. Dwejra is a very special place for me
because as a young kid I used to come here and spend whole summers here going up and down, swimming in the inland sea and running around over here next to
Ħaġret il-Ġeneral. It’s an amazing site to see. Also, another site that growing up
was very prominent in this area was the Azure Window, which unfortunately is now
gone, but it’s a great memory to have. We are at the Wied il-Mielah Window, the only rock formation window left on the island of Gozo. Let’s go and see it. As a kid, we used to come here with my
grandad and we used to fish from up here. I was always scared because the
cliffs are so high as you can see and the water looks very deep. And this is the perfect place to eat ftira. That`s how my father used to eat it. Okay, now the cooking is all done. A bit about myself. So I am Giovann, as I said before and I’m a chef. I’ve been away from Gozo and Malta for around 14 years, cooking around the world as a
chef. At the moment I am cooking in New York. And I work at this restaurant called Aqua and wherever I am I try to bring my childhood and my
food memories to the cuisine and to the kitchen I am at. And that’s one of the things that I take with me along wherever I go, from my mom’s kitchen to the world really. I think one of the best parts
about my job and about being abroad, traveling and cooking is to showcase
where I’m from, Malta and Gozo. I think I come across a lot of people that they
don’t know where Malta and Gozo is. And Malta is full of culture and good
people, great people and loads of history and great food. So it’s very
important that everybody watches this video. Remind me. So we’re not Okay. So I hope you have enjoyed this
beautiful journey on this paradise of an island Gozo and my home. I wish you can
try all the food that we have cooked today. So book your flight and come
visit this amazing island.