Pastizzi

Ingredients

• Flour500 g
• Water250 ml
• Lard or margarine250 g
• Ricotta500 g
• Eggs2
• Yellow split peas250 g
• Onion1
• Parsley30 g
• Vegetable oil40 ml
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a dough from the flour, water and salt, work it ten minutes and rest it half an hour.

   42 min

2. 2

   Boil the split peas with the onion for forty minutes until completely soft, mash them and season.

   45 min

3. 3

   Mix the ricotta with the eggs, parsley, salt and pepper.

   6 min

4. 4

   Roll the dough very thin, spread it with fat, roll it up and chill it twenty minutes.

   30 min

5. 5

   Cut the roll into pieces and flatten each into a round; the layers give the flakiness.

   20 min

6. 6

   Add the filling and seal them: ricotta as an open-topped boat, peas as a closed diamond.

   20 min

7. 7

   Bake at 220 °C for thirty minutes, to a deep gold, and serve hot.

   32 min

About the dish

The pastry is made with margarine or lard and rolled in several layers with fat between them. Ordinary puff pastry works, but the Maltese version is richer and therefore crisper.

There are exactly two fillings: ricotta and cooked-down peas. There is no third on Malta, and variations like chicken or chocolate are sold to tourists rather than locals.

The ricotta one is shaped into an open-topped boat and the pea one into a diamond. The shape is how you know what is inside without asking.

Worth knowing

• — Keep the dough cold between stages. Warm fat soaks into the pastry and there are no layers.
• — Heat the oven fully in advance. A low temperature melts the fat before the pastry sets.
• — They are eaten scalding, out of a paper bag. Cooled pastizzi lose half the point.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

14 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

40 g

More from Malta

• Maltese rabbit stew — Rabbit stewed in red wine with garlic and bay. The national dish of Malta.