Although Malta is a very small island, it is home to many different cultures: in just 6 months here we have already tried at least 10 typical dishes from 10 different countries.
Don’t get us wrong, we still love Italian cuisine, but why stop at just that? There are so many delicious ones!
Having always lived in a small town, it wasn’t part of our daily routine to experiment with new and foreign foods, also because there weren’t really any places that offered certain types of cuisine. Instead, by getting out of our comfort zone and moving to cosmopolitan places, we were able to try so many different specialties.
We don’t want to say for sure, but maybe staying “at home” this would not have been possible.
We are now get used to eating things that before we moved abroad were not part of our daily “menu”. For example, we now often eat “chili con carne” (veal with tomatoes, herbs and rice), noodles with zucchini, carrots and soy sauce, or Serbian Gibanica (pronounced “Ghibanizza“) which has become almost our favorite dish.
We discovered it thanks to our Serbian flatmate who one evening decided to prepare dinner for all of us by letting us taste a typical dish of his culture: a real treat, the word of a good eater!
After all, we like to experiment and discover new cuisines and then incorporate them into our own; just think of the noodles, considered the devil’s food by the majority of italians, which if cooked properly and cooked with ingredients such as zucchini or carrots cut into julienne, are not bad at all!
Anyway, here are the 10 dishes from 10 different cultures that we ate in just 6 months in Malta:
- Maltese Pastizz (more commonly pronounced “Pastizzo”), a sort of puff pastry filled with ricotta or pea cream;
- Greek Gyros pita;
- German pretzel;
- Turkish Kebab;
- Mexican tacos and burritos;
- American pizza with fries dipped in milkshake;
- Pad-thai, a spicy noodle dish with grilled vegetables;
- Japanese sushi (of course);
- English Scones, which can be two ways: either mini-sandwiches filled with jam and cream, or slices of cake with raisins also with jam and cream;
- Gibanica, a typical Balkan dish that consists of baked filo pastry with eggs and ricotta cheese.
You know what the best part is? That all these dishes were cooked by people from that culture, often even in typically decorated restaurants. We say thank to Malta for being so international and ourselves for being ready to embrace the new, thus stopping trusting only what we know.
We still love Amatriciana or Carbonara, but why stop at our culture when you can eat anything! We had confirmation of what we have always believed: there is not only the favorite restaurant “under the house”, and there is no reason to have prejudices or fears towards ethnic and foreign places.
It may seem like a triviality, but in reality even trying different cuisines helps you understand how big and varied the world is. It is not a matter of which cuisine is the best or the worst, all countries can surprise and offer delicacies. This is why the world deserves to be looked at with both eyes open: one alone is not enough to be able to appreciate it.
In conclusion, we can say that moving abroad opens not only the mind, but also the stomach!
