Pastizzi

Malta's diamond-shaped pastries, a laminated dough folded around ricotta or spiced mushy peas and baked until the layers shatter, eaten from a paper bag

Origin: Valletta and Malta

From the journey of Wheat.

Pastizzi are the Maltese street food and they are everywhere: from the pastizzeria hatch, from a bar, from a kiosk, eaten hot out of a paper bag at any hour. The pastry is laminated with margarine or lard and folded repeatedly to give something between filo and rough puff, and the two fillings are fixed by convention: irkotta, sheep's-milk ricotta seasoned with pepper and parsley, and piżelli, a thick, spiced, almost curried mushy pea filling. The shape tells you which is which. Ricotta pastizzi are folded into a diamond with the seam along the top; pea ones are closed into a rounder, more oval parcel. Every Maltese knows the code and orders accordingly. Malta sits exactly where its food suggests: Arab and Sicilian layers under a Spanish and then a British colonial one. The lamination technique and the shape have relatives across the Maghreb and Sicily, and the wheat itself came through the same Mediterranean grain trade that fed Rome, since the islands have never grown nearly enough of their own. The other things on a Maltese table are fenek moqli, rabbit slow-braised in garlic and red wine, which is the national dish, and imqarrun il-forn, baked macaroni with minced meat and egg.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 500 g strong white bread flour
  • 280 ml water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil

Lamination

  • 250 g lard or hard margarine, softened to a spreadable paste

Ricotta filling

  • 500 g ricotta, well drained
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
  • 1 tsp black pepper

Pea filling

  • 300 g dried split peas, cooked soft and drained
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • 2 tbsp olive oil

Seasoning

  • 0.5 tsp salt

Method

  1. Mix the flour, water, salt, and oil into a firm dough and knead for ten minutes until smooth and elastic. Rest, wrapped, for one hour.
  2. For the ricotta filling, beat the drained ricotta with the eggs, parsley, and pepper. For the pea filling, soften the onion in the oil, add the curry powder and cooked peas, mash coarsely, and season. Cool both.
  3. Roll the dough out as thinly as you can on a large oiled surface, then stretch it further with the backs of your hands until it is almost translucent.
  4. Spread the softened lard thinly over the whole sheet, then roll it up tightly into a long rope from one long edge.
  5. Coil the rope into a spiral, wrap it, and rest in the refrigerator for thirty minutes.
  6. Cut the rope into sixteen discs, cut side up, and flatten each one gently with your thumbs into a small round, spiralling outward.
  7. Place a spoonful of filling in the centre of each. For ricotta, fold two opposite sides over into a diamond with an open seam on top; for peas, close them into a rounder oval parcel.
  8. Bake at 200C (fan 180C, gas 6) for thirty to thirty-five minutes until deep golden and visibly flaky.
  9. Eat hot, from a paper bag, within the hour.

Notes

Lard gives the authentic flake; hard margarine is the common commercial choice and works. Butter is too soft and leaks. Maltese irkotta is sheep's milk and drier than most supermarket ricotta. Drain yours overnight in a sieve if it is wet. The pea filling is genuinely mildly curried, a British colonial fingerprint that Maltese cooks have long since made their own.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

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