Italian Cuisine
Let's talk about Italian cuisine in Malta!
Italian food Have Taken The World By Storm! You’re only a few steps away from an Italian restaurant in Malta and in most other countries in the world! It is a cuisine that is wildly popular across the globe, mainly due to its ease of access to staple ingredients and simple recipes.
The Mediterranean diet is considered to be one of the healthiest, owed to ingredients that come with some super health benefits. It contains an array of fruit and vegetables, cereals and cereal products (such as pasta, brown rice and wholegrain bread), fish, dairy and white meat. In Malta, the cuisine was heavily based on the diet maintained by the Italians and has largely influenced the Italian restaurants here, as a lot of basic items can be found and grown locally here, due to the similarities in both climate, soil and weather.
Food is sacred to Italians and is somewhat of a ritual. Like many stories, recipes and traditions have been passed down generations. Once the Roman Empire fell, each region throughout Italy gained fame slowly, but steadily, for their unique and individual recipes – like when you think of Naples, you automatically picture a pizza, in Milan it’s risotto, in Tuscany it’s wild boar and truffles and in Sardinia it’s seafood. Today, many variations of the ‘trattoria’, ‘pizzeria’ and restaurants can be found everywhere, and Malta is no exception.
Like in every other cuisine, there are ingredients which form the basis of most Italian dishes and are essential to its success. These are mainly:
Italian restaurants in Malta can be found all across the Maltese islands and have become a go-to for many reasons, whether it’s a birthday meal, work event, family dinner and so on – mostly because there is such a vast choice of dishes that everyone is bound to find something they’ll like. The most popular dishes at Italian restaurants in Malta are usually:
And for dessert, it would have to be the Tiramisu! Made from sponge (ladyfingers) soaked in espresso (with quite a bit of rum!) and then layered with mascarpone cheese, whipped eggs and sugar and topped with a fine layer of cocoa. Divine!
The variety and imagination in Italian cuisine is remarkable, and has made some of it’s most popular dishes an easy target for exportation. This cuisine is both foreign and yet so familiar, mainly because so many of the ingredients used are not traditionally Italian! They are a people that have learnt to adapt, borrow, invent and re-invent the wheel – which is definitely why so much success is owed to this cuisine.
Italian restaurants in Malta have flourished because of the outstanding flavour that even the simplest of ingredients provide when mixed together – the balance that is struck between simplicity and creativity has created a true art form and is why Italian restaurants have flourished globally!