Imqarrun il-forn

Malta's baked macaroni: pasta bound in a slow beef and pork ragù with egg, baked until the top layer crisps into sheets

Origin: Valletta & Malta

From the journey of Wheat.

Imqarrun il-forn is baked macaroni and it is the Maltese Sunday dish, cooked in a deep tray in quantities meant to feed a family twice and eaten as readily cold the next day as hot from the oven. Every household holds that its own is correct and most will tell you the corner pieces, where the pasta catches and crisps against the tin, are the ones worth having. Malta's cooking sits between Sicily and North Africa and answers to both, with two centuries of British rule layered over the top. The pasta and the ragù are plainly Italian in origin: the islands were part of the Kingdom of Sicily for centuries and the Gragnano dried-pasta trade supplied the whole central Mediterranean. What Malta did with it is its own. Beaten egg is stirred through the sauced pasta before baking, which sets the whole into something sliceable rather than merely saucy, and that egg is the difference between imqarrun il-forn and a Sicilian pasta al forno. The ragù is slow, mixed beef and pork, heavy with tomato purée rather than fresh tomato, and seasoned with bay and a little curry powder in many households, which is one of the odder traces the British left on the island's cooking and is entirely normal there. It is sold by the slice from pastizzerija counters alongside the pastizzi, wrapped in paper and eaten in the hand, which is the form most visitors meet first.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 600 g penne or macaroni
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1 tsp black pepper

Ragù

  • 500 g minced beef
  • 300 g minced pork
  • 2 onions, finely chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 5 tbsp tomato purée
  • 400 g tinned chopped tomatoes
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp mild curry powder (optional but traditional)
  • 150 ml red wine

To bind

  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 120 g grated pecorino or parmesan

Method

  1. Heat the olive oil and cook the onions gently until soft and golden, about twelve minutes, then add the garlic for a minute.
  2. Add both minces and brown them thoroughly, breaking up the lumps.
  3. Stir in the tomato purée and the curry powder, if using, and cook out for four minutes until the purée darkens.
  4. Pour in the wine and let it bubble away, then add the tinned tomatoes, bay leaves, salt, and pepper.
  5. Simmer uncovered for at least an hour and a quarter, stirring occasionally, until very thick and the oil separates. A loose ragù gives a wet bake, so reduce it further than you think necessary.
  6. Cook the pasta in well-salted water for three minutes less than the packet says. It will finish in the oven and overcooked pasta collapses.
  7. Drain and combine the pasta with the ragù and two thirds of the cheese. Let it cool for five minutes, then stir in the beaten eggs quickly and thoroughly. The pasta must not be so hot that it scrambles them.
  8. Tip into a deep greased baking tin, press down level, and scatter the remaining cheese over the top.
  9. Bake at 180°C for forty to forty-five minutes, until set through and the top layer of pasta has gone brown and crisp.
  10. Rest for fifteen minutes before cutting, or it will not hold a slice. Serve in squares, warm or at room temperature.

Notes

The egg is what makes this Maltese and what lets it be cut into squares; stir it in off the heat and quickly. Reduce the ragù hard, since the commonest failure is a wet bake that will not slice. Undercook the pasta by three minutes. The curry powder sounds wrong and is genuinely traditional in many Maltese households, a small British inheritance; leave it out if you prefer, but try it once.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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