One day It’s grey, with heavy clouds and high humidity. The sea is very calm. Yesterday it was wild, with wind and roiling white caps; tomorrow it will be hot, calm and sunny all day. Typical island weather.
Here, for a few weeks, I go full-on Mediterranean in the kitchen. At least a month or so ahead of my north London kitchen, I’m cooking with artichokes, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, broad beans and superb local new potatoes, all straight from the fields.
A typical lunch on the island of Goza where Frances has a second home. (Image: Frances Bissell) Lunch is fresh cheeselets, tomatoes and the most fabulous sourdough, the same as used for making the traditional Maltese loaf, but baked in a tin. It costs the equivalent of 90p for an 800 gram loaf and is so crusty that I have to cut off the roof to slice it.
Strawberries, loquats and lemons are abundant, and I make a few jars of lemon marmalade for next time.
As spring turns into summer, and north London’s farmers’ markets show us their best, I shall be cooking all the dishes that have appeared on our Gozo table over the last few weeks.
On Easter Sunday with wonderful smells coming from my neighbour’s kitchen I cooked it contadina- style on top of the stove, a dish I first learned to make with chicken, with my friends the Lancellottis near Modena.
This is an uncomplicated dish, whether you use chicken or rabbit, and makes a change from the ubiquitous tray bake. I always look for rabbit in the Parliament Hill Market, where Marjan occasionally has it on his stall as well as the excellent New Forest roe deer.
I have not yet devised a “waste not” recipe for broad beans, although I am sure someone has. Instead I make sure only to prepare them the day before the bin men come.
They are irresistible, the beans, not the bin men. As a garnish or in a salad, they add a bright, spring-like note, but blended with olive oil, garlic, lemon zest and juice and fresh parsley, savory or lovage, broad beans make an incomparable spread for crostini or a dip for crudités.
I first started making this with the butter beans sold here alongside capers, olives, giardiniera, and sun-dried tomatoes in the village grocery shop, the delightfully-named Ideal Stores.
As the evenings are still cool here, a baked dish is often the one of choice as the oven warms the stone-flagged kitchen living-room. I have been making a dish easily replicated in my London kitchen.
It first appears in my 2011 Gozo kitchen diary, when a neighbour brought a basket of vegetables for us: “First oil an ovenproof dish. Layer peeled, sliced potatoes, a seasoning of sea salt, add a layer of sliced courgettes, more potatoes, then a layer of sliced tomatoes. Between the layers scatter a few capers and some crumbled gbejniet. Add more olive oil if you feel the dish needs it, then grate some pepper cheeselet on top. Bake at 180C until the potatoes yield to the knife and the dish is beginning to brown and bubble”.
If you have artichoke hearts in the freezer, use them, and squash, mushrooms, fennel, and whatever appeals. You can add more potatoes. Charlottes work well in this dish; so versatile, they are my favourite potatoes. Use any piquant cheese to replace the pepper cheeselet, and fresh goat or sheep’s cheese to replace the gbejniet.
Richly decorated almond biscuits, figolla, the special Easter pastry, are a perfect dessert here, but sliced strawberries, local honey and ricotta are just as fine, or a compote of loquats; a compote which will be made with nectarines, peaches and figs as summer arrives.
Rabbit (or chicken) alla contadina (Serves 4 to 6)
Chicken thighs make the best and juiciest alternative to rabbit. Use one or two more than the number of people you are feeding otherwise a small (1.2 k) chicken jointed.
1 rabbit jointed
70 ml extra virgin olive oil
800 g to 1kg Charlotte potatoes or similar – peeled and cut into roughly 5 cm chunks
6 ripe plum tomatoes, quartered and seeded
White wine or stock – see recipe
Salt
Pepper
Parsley – optional
Grated lemon zest- optional
Garlic- optional
Method:
Fry the meat pieces in a third of the oil and cook for 20 minutes. At the same time, in a separate pan fry the potatoes in another third of the oil for 20 minutes.
Stir both pans at intervals to avoid sticking. In one large frying pan, fry the tomatoes for 2-3 minutes in the remaining oil, then add the meat and potatoes. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes more until the meat is tender.
Add a little wine or stock if the ingredients looks as if they are drying out, although this should not be a soupy dish. Season lightly, and stir in any of the optional garnishes. Serve from the pan, or transfer to a warm serving platter if you want posh.
A lightly chilled red wine is just right with this, a frappato would be my wine of choice, unless I could find an absolutely fresh lambrusco di sorbara.
Cook’s note: Do not worry if you do not have enough frying pans. Everything can be cooked in the same pan, but frying the meat and potatoes separately allows each to develop their own golden crisp edges, adding extra texture to the dish.
© Frances Bissell 2025. All rights reserved.
