Back to Base

Seems like it's been ages ago, but the time is ripe.
I'm just back from Malta and still very keen on eating Maltese foods and using Maltese ingredients. I must admit they are VERY hard to come by in Belgium, but with the help of my family, I do keep a constant supply of a number of items including kunserva, pastizzi and of course twistees !

This summer I tried to see what was new on the market and new Maltese products seemed to be sprouting. New cheese spreads, new brands packing bigilla and of course gbejniet.


My girls gave me a butter churner last Christmas which was put to good use a few days later when the local supermarket was trying to get rid of a large amount of soon-to-expire cream. We made butter, which we ate, froze and even made bread with the buttermilk.

They also gave me a book about cheeses and butter which I must admit I have not really used except for the part where it explains how to make butter.

Having come back from Malta though, I was keen to try my hand at making Gbejniet.  These are little cheeselets made from goat's or sheep's milk and do not taste anything like the goats cheese we find here, chèvre.



I have found a recipe from Marlene Zammit who lives in Australia and runs Maltese Mouthful. Her recipe for gbejniet seems very authentic however, the ratio of milk to rennet varies completely to the once published by Pippa Mattei.  I just need to source the fresh goat's or sheep's milk and try the recipes out! 

Look out for more updates on my Instagram or Twitter accounts !

Curried chicken salad

This salad is also called coronation chicken as it was once created for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation celebration in 1953.

It is an easy salad to prepare and will make a prefect fresh dish for your summer entertainment or as a side dish to your BBQs. Here is what you need to serve 2 persons as a main course

2 Chicken thighs
200g roasted unsalted peanuts
1 tablespoon Medium curry paste
5 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 x 180ml natural yoghurt
1 tablespoon Mango Chutney
Mixed salad leaves

Start off by cooking the chicken thighs. You can do this by boiling them with some root vegetables until they are cooked through.

Once your chicken is done, allow it to cool then cut it into small, bite-size pieces.
In the meantime prepare the sauce. Mix the mayo, yoghurt and curry paste together in a large bowl. Add the mango chutney and finally stir in the chicken pieces.

Make sure that you do not break the chicken whilst stirring it, so mix slowly.

Once you are ready to serve, prepare your presentation bowl and line it with the mixed salad leaves. If you do not find mixed leaves, then you can just use some lettuce leaves.

Next pour in the chicken mixture and spread it evenly around the bowl. Finally sprinkle with the roughly chopped roasted peanuts.

This salad is best served at room temperature. Do not keep for more than 3 days after the salad has been prepared.

Caponata

Caponata is essentially a tomato based cooked salad. You can prepare copious amounts of this dish and store it in the fridge. Caponata is usually served as a side-dish but you can also use it as a pizza topping.

Very low in calories, this dish is great as part of a calorie controlled diet.

Here is what you need to make enough for a 2 litre bowl
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
2 medium onions
1 medium aubergine, peeled and diced
1 thick celery stick
2 tablespoons tomato paste (kunserva)
2 tins x 400g chopped tomatoes (polpa)
100g green pitted olives
50g capers
1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
Salt & Pepper
1 heaped teaspoon dried Oregano or some fresh leaves chopped
1 teaspoon sugar

Start off by placing about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pot. Now add the onions and sizzle until they start letting off their aroma. Next add the aubergines and the celery sticks which needs to be cut roughly the same size as the aubergines that is in small cubes about 1cm.

Once the aubergines start softening, add the tomato paste and the tinned tomatoes. Now fill 1 of the tins of the tomatoes that you have just added with water and add it to the pot.

Add the olives and capers. You could chop these roughly if you prefer. Now, bring the tomato sauce to the boil and add the balsamic vinegar, oregano and the sugar. Season with salt and pepper according to your taste.

Let the Caponata simmer for about 45 minutes until it is thick and the vegetables can be seen through the sauce. This dish can be served warm or straight out of the fridge. Caponata can be stored refrigerated, in a sealed container for a couple of days.

Classic Caesar's Salad

What can you cook on hot days like these? Salads, of course!

Here is a recipe for the Classic Caesar’s salad. Try serving this for supper on hot summer nights and the dishes will be wiped clean!

I like to prepare the dressing and the croutons but I leave the chicken for the end so that I can serve it warm. If you are having a BBQ, you can also cook the meat on the BBQ then add it to your salad.

Here is what you need to make enough salad for 4 persons.

To make to croutons
2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 small Maltese bread cut into cubes
½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano

To make the dressing
1 garlic clove
4 anchovy fillets
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
Mayonnaise
Natural Yoghurt

For the salad
1 iceberg lettuce
1 romaine lettuce
Or 2 bags mixed salad leaves
Parmesan cheese shavings
1 chicken breast

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Toss all the ingredients for the croutons together in a bowl and spread them in a baking tray. Bake until stiff and crunchy.
2. Place the garlic, anchovy fillets in a bowl and mash to a pulp. Add the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce then stir in the mayonnaise and the yoghurt.
3. Place the washed salad leaves in a bowl.
4. Cook the chicken breast, then cut it into strips and place on top of the salad leaves.
5. Pour the dressing over the chicken and finally decorate with the Parmesan shavings.

Moroccan Style Couscous

Couscous is North Africa’s answer to pasta. A staple food in these countries that requires very little preparation and not a lot of utensils to have it cooked. In view of this, couscous had become the ideal food for the nomadic people but was also prepared by other tribes.

With in increase in different grains being introduced in our diets, couscous found it’s way in our European dishes along side others like quinoa, barley and various kinds of rice. But unlike many of these, couscous is very easy to prepare and is now available in most supermarkets and on various restaurant menus.

Couscous can be used as a substitute to potatoes, as a side-dish or as a plate on it’s own.

Couscous is very versatile as it can be eaten plain or mixed with various spices, meats and sauces.

In morocco, where couscous is a daily staple, this is never served cold but it is served with stews and other hot dishes. Also, there are number of households that still prepare their couscous from scratch this takes hours of preparation. We are used to the instant couscous that is ready in 5 minutes or less and this is one of the main reasons why couscous has become so popular in meals today.

Here is what you need to make this morrocan style couscous which can be eaten as a meal or served as part of a buffet.
250g Couscous
2 teaspoons Coriander paste
200ml Chicken stock – warmed
1 tin Chickpeas
2 small marrows – diced
Walnut oil
Walnut Pieces

Start off by placing the couscous in a large bowl. Now add the hot stock and cover the bowl with a plate. Let the couscous rest until the stock has been absorbed.

Now using a fork and NOT a spoon, stir the couscous until it fluffs up. Next add the coriander and again mix it in using a fork. Now stir in the marrows which are raw and the chickpeas.
Should you be serving the couscous in a different bowl, change your bowl at this stage. Now drizzle a generous helping of walnut oil and top with walnut pieces. Walnut oil can be found in Marks & Spencer food section.

This dish can be served warm or cold as part of a summer buffet.

Lamb's Lettuce

Lamb's lettuce is a salad green which grows in a rosette of long spoon shaped leaves which may also be clustered in loose heads. Lamb's lettuce is used in salad mixes together with other greens such as rocket, frisee or any other type of salad leaves.

The name comes from the fact that the leaves resemble in size and shape a lamb's tongue!). This type of lettuce is usually sold bunched together with its roots which are best kept intact until you are ready to use it.

Place the roots in a little water and store it in the fridge, this way the lettuce will keep for days. As a salad green, it is more expensive than the standard cos (hass twil) or iceberg (kabbucjat) that we are accustomed to buying, however, it is a nice variation to your salad dishes.

Here is what you need to make a lamb’s lettuce salad for 2:
1 Lambs lettuce
4 slices back bacon
1 chicken breast
3 garlic
1 sprig of rosemary
Some mushrooms
2 slices stale bread.

Start off by cutting the bread into little cubes. Cut the bread vertically and horizontally so that you have 4 pieces, now cut each piece into 4 again and you will have 16 cubes from each slice.

Sprinkle the bread with some olive oil and grill them under a hot grill until they become crunchy.

Next, wash the lettuce and place on your plates.

Grill the chicken together with the garlic cloves and rosemary. Once it is cooked through, cook the bacon.

Place the chicken and bacon over the lettuce, next sprinkle the mushrooms and finally top with the bread.

Should you have small forest mushrooms such as finferli I would use those and not the local white variety for this salad. However, if these are not available, then buy some local ones and chop them into small pieces.

Feta Salad

Weather is still somewhat undecided but I’m sure that most of you are already thinking of summer BBQs and outdoor entertaining. With this in mind, this week I shall be giving the recipe for a feta cheese salad. It has raw mushrooms added, so if you are not keen on eating raw mushrooms then you could just omit, however, if you’ve never tried them I suggest you give it a try.

As are most of my recipes, this salad is very easy to prepare, and I suggest that you prepare it a couple of hours before serving so that the flavours blend better. This is what you will need to serve 6:

4 Portobello Mushrooms (big flat white ones)
4 Tomatoes
Iceberg lettuce leaves, around 5
1 English Cucumber
200gr Feta cheese
Black olives (pitted if you prefer)
Olive oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Oregano

Start off by washing and draining the tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber. Do not wash the mushrooms but just wipe them clean with some kitchen paper. Next prepare your serving bowl preferable a white one and tear the lettuce placing them at the bottom of the bowl.

Slice your cucumber (with the skin still on) and place them by the side of the bowl, all around the top. De-seed the tomatoes and dice them into little cubes, slice the mushrooms finely and spread all over the lettuce. Now, chop the feta cheese until it is crumbly and form a small ring towards the middle, leaving enough space to place the olives at the centre of the bowl. Using the Danish feta will not give you the same crumble texture as the original greek cheese would give.

In a small bowl, mix 3 spoons of olive oil and 1 spoon of balsamic vinegar together with the oregano or any other herb of your choice. Drizzle it over the salad leaving as many of the mushrooms untouched as possible. Mushrooms that would have the vinaigrette on them will turn dark.

Apart from being tasty, presenting the salad in this way will create an edible centre piece for your table!

Warm Mixed Grilled salad

This salad is very easy to prepare and is a welcome change to the standard lettuce and tomato salad! Warm vegetables are ideal to prepare when you are entertaining since they can be prepared in advance and served hot or cold.

You can also serve a small plated quantity of this salad as a vegetarian starter. The vegetables chosen will give you a summer Mediterranean feel and this is what we are longing for during this time of year!

Here is what you will need to serve 4 as a side dish.
2 long aubergines sliced lengthwise
4 long zucchini sliced lengthwise
2 green peppers sliced lengthwise
4 or 5 mushrooms sliced
4 garlic cloves – slit in half
Olive Oil
Salt & pepper
some basil leaves – torn NOT chopped

Start off by slicing the aubergines and sprinkling them with salt. This will get rid of the excess water within the vegetables. They should be left to stand for at least 2 hrs.

Next heat a griddle pan until smoking hot and place the vegetables for a couple of seconds until the slices have been charred on both sides.

Now place the vegetables together in a bowl and stir them together with a very generous helping of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and allow the salad to rest for a couple of minutes before serving. You can also chop some fresh red chili if you wish to make this dish a little spicier!

This recipe has been previously published in the Best Buy Magazine, out monthly with The Times.

Should you like to contact me, please do so on concita@demicoli.com