Gozo and its traditional recepies

I love cooking, and people who know me realize that it is one of my passions.  I come from a family of cooks.  My grandfather Joseph Farrugia was an excellent cook and was also an entrepreneur.  He was the first person in Gozo to sell our traditional and most famous pastizzi.  These are pastries filled with either ricotta cheese or with peas.  He used to bake them early in the morning and then sell them out in the streets of Victoria.  Now a days you will find a snack bar in every corner of Victoria selling these delicious pastries, but about 45 years ago you would have found my grandfather together with my mum going up the main streets of Victoria with huge trays selling these savoury pastries. 

Well, my mum took after her dad and also my brother who is a chef, so I might say that cooking runs in the blood of my family.  Since I was a child, I used to help my mum in our restaurant in Victoria and by the age of 8 years I prepared the dough for the pizza, for the savoury pies and the dough for my mum's famous lemon merangue and her mouth watering apple pies.  By the age of 15 I worked in my family's restaurant as the Pizzaiola, making hundred's of pizzas weekly. No joke!

Now I occasionally go and help out my mum at the restaurant but at home it is my pleasure to cook and organise dinners!  Last dinner I organised was for a group of Australians from Tazmania who spent a whole month in Ta' Karmena Maisonette and before they left I made a dinner for them.  They were a really sweet group and I hope to see them again in the future!