Maltese rucola and fig salad

It's summer here and it's fig time in malta. After work I go for a walk in the countryside and as fig trees grow on the walkways, I help myself to this wonderfull fruit. 

This is one of my favourite summer salads and it's very easy and simple. 

Mini (quail) scotch eggs

As soon as my quails started laying eggs, I was already wondering what i could try to do with all those eggs... Besides the obvious mini sunny side up, poached hard boiled etc... I wanted to try the mini scotch eggs...

Salt Cured Olives

This is the other method of curing olives i promised you... Salt curing. 

Water Cured Maltese Olives

October is the month when olives are picked. Traditionally my father has been curing our olives in brine... This year I decided to try 2 other methods: water curing and salt curing.

This is the result of my water cured olives.

Method:

You can either crush the olives with a mallet or cut the olives (as i did) with a paring knife.
Place the olives in a bowl full of cold water and put a weight on so that all the olives are submerged.
I used a plastic bag filled with water and placed it on the olives.

Tabouleh

Tabouleh is uswally greener, but when I did this I had a limited amount of parsley

• Summer is a good time to try different salads. 
• The first time I was in Damascus I had this wonderful parsley salad and I have been trying to find the recipie ever since... 
• Tabouleh... it is very refreshing and tasty and you can still get free parsley from your vegetable vendor here in Malta... actually it's the only free thing we still get :)

So try it out and enjoy... 

Ful bit-Tewm - (Broad bean casserole)

Ingredients 

1.4grms  broad beans
Several cloves of garlic
Chopped parsley
Fresh mint
2 or 3 tablespoons vinegar
2 or 3 tablespoons oil
Courgettes cut into small pieces
1 potato cut into small pieces
Salt and pepper
1 large white onion small pieces

Method

Remove both the outer pods and the inner skins from beans.Put them in a saucepan and add the cloves of garlic.

Add the other ingredients together with water to moisten, about half a pint.

Bring to the boil and then simmer slowly until beans are cooked.

May be served hot or cold.

Enjoy with some malteses bread.

Gbejniet Friski

Here is a recipe for gbejniet which makes use of commercial rennet.

Ingredients

1 pint of milk

2 teaspoons rennet

A pinch of salt

Method

Put the milk in a saucepan and heat to 98° or until it reaches body temperature.  Stir in while heating.  Remove from the fire and add the rennet and the salt.  Cover and leave strictly alone for 1 hour.  Now spoon the mixture into 2 baskets and put these in a colander.  There may be too mcuh milk for the two baskets; you may have to wait until some moisture is lost.  After about 6 hours they should be fairly set.  Take one basket at a time, turn the cheese into the palm of one hand; now transfer it to the other hand and replace it in the basket.  This serves to turn the cheese upside down.  Put the baskets in a soup plate or pie dish and leave it to set until the next day.  Remember to empty out the liquid which oozes out.  Sprinkle the cheeses with rough salt and freshly ground black pepper and east with toasted Malta bread.