Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes

Ingredients

Vegetables, cleaned and cut into medium chunks:

Essential:

• Cabbage - a whole medium-sized cabbage
• Potatoes - 2 large
• Onions - 2 large
• Kohlrabi - 1 or 2
• Chopped green celery leaves (Maltese krafes)

Optional:

• Pumpkin (ideally both red and yellow flesh kinds: qargħa hamra and qargħa Torka) - a large slice of each
• Cauliflower - half a medium cauliflower
• Carrots - 3 or 4

Meats:

Choose 1 or 2 of the following items:

• 4 fresh Maltese sausages left whole (Maltese sausages are made of ground lean and fat pork with garlic, parsley, salt, black peppercorns, coriander seeds)
• 4 shoulder cut pork chops (ideally left attached in one piece and separated only after cooking)
• A 300 g piece of fresh pork belly OR the same of salt cured gammon or smoked bacon

Plus

• A ham hock OR a pig's trotter (not boned)
• 1 or 2 tbsp. tomato paste
• Salt and pepper
• A few sprigs of chopped flat leaf parsley
• Oil for frying the onion

Procedure

Note: If using salt cured gammon, soak in cold water over night to remove the saltiness

1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil and in it scald the hock or trotter for 10 minutes
2. Remove the hock or trotter, discard the water, refill with fresh water and bring to the boil again.
3. Place the hock or trotter in the boiling water with the other meats you are using, turn heat down and cook a few minutes skimming scum from the surface.
4. When there is no more scum forming remove the meats from the water, which you reserve, and add the meats to the pot with the vegetables prepared as below:
5. Soften and wilt the onion in the olive oil without letting it brown
6. Add the diced vegetables and the celery leaves, season with salt and pepper, cover and sweat together on low heat for 5/6 minutes
7. Add the tomato paste previously diluted with a little water
8. Add the meats along with the bone-in hock or trotter
9. Add some of the water in which you boiled the meats (the quantity depends on whether you want a one-dish stew or a two course meal, see below) and simmer over moderate low heat till the meats are tender
10. Five minutes from the end of cooking time taste and adjust for seasoning, and add the chopped flat leaf parsley

To Serve Kawlata

• As a one course meal - in this case you are aiming for a chunky stew, so you don't want to add too much liquid and you serve with crusty bread

• As a two course meal, in which case you will want enough liquid to serve a soupy first course. The meats you remove, slice if necessary and keep warm to serve alone or maybe with a little light tomato sauce. You can cook a small amount of rice in the vegetable soup if you wish though it is hardly necessary.

It is not traditional to cook pasta in the soup, neither is it customary to grate cheese on top.