‘What’s your fish to feed ratio? How far is the farm you work for away from the shore? If you take away texture and turn fish into a mousse, can you tell the difference in flavour between three different types of farmed fish?’

These, and many others, were the kind of questions (also called ‘attacks’) we ended up asking a poor fish farm scientist who Claude Camilleri, chef-patron of Palazzo Santa Rosa, invited to the Mona’s Meals Fish Workshop on Saturday 12^th June. As he told me later, he thought he was just going to come over to ‘give a little speech’. Obviously he had no idea what he was getting in for: the attendees of the Mona’s Meals Workshops tend to be an intelligent and rambunctious lot.  Fish farming does not tend to be one of the love of our lives.

Otherwise the workshop was the usual fantastic few hours of cooking. David Micallef, who will one day be credited with changing the face of sustainable, yet profit-making, farming (in his case fowl and trout, yes, trout) on this island, explained what he is trying to do to the attendees. Apart from saving breeds which everybody seems to have forgotten about in their quest for ‘cheap chicken’, David is slowly becoming an unofficial scientist himself using tried-and-tested local methods, taking the environment into consideration and extricating himself from the tyranny of ewrofak, the commercial feed given to everything from chicken to fish.

Claude tried valiantly to stick up for farming by taking the ‘oceans are overfished’ stance. He is right: oceans are terribly overfished, stocks are down to thirty percent, fish are not recuperating and Malta managed to catch its entire tuna quota in the first week of the season. Yet farming, at least in the way it is being done in the majority of cases, is not the answer. This is why http://tinyurl.com/2vevznd

Marvin, executive chef at Sciacca in St. Julians, a restaurant which was recently awarded 5 stars by this website, is not giving in to the spiel. He continues to turn up at 7.30 at the pixkerija to buy his wild fish, sources well and has managed to put together a ten-dish degustation menu for just €39, putting paid to the idea that wild fish is expensive once and for all.

The ‘students’ were really fantastic, being the food-aware bunch that they are. They peeled prawns, made stock with the shells, ate the meat in a risotto, constructed the salt-crusted kahli and generally enjoyed themselves. Afterwards we all sat in the blazing sun of Margo’s Neapolitan Pizzeria ate and drank (too quickly!) our bottles of Sicilian Ara’, my favourite lemony (and perfect for fish) white and Mamma Draja, a wonderful nero d’avola rosato (not a rose, so perfectly acceptable for men to rave about). As he reminded us every minute he could steal, FIFA style, both (and many others) are available from Dominic at Dical House in Mosta http://www.dicalhouse.com. Dominic is a long-standing attendee at the Mona’s Meals workshops and we let him get away with this kind of murder because he, like the other three men, is really trying to bring good food into Malta.

Those who could tear themselves away from the kitchen ate the risotto outside and we all followed up with the very delicious salt-baked fish. Afterwards we sat in the shade, smoked and generally raved about our ‘discoveries’ in Sri Lanka (this year’s hottest destination: I’ll be telling you more about it pretty soon; if you cannot control yourself get in touch with the lovely ladies at Royal Travel on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ), India, Morocco and Marvin’s favourite, Sicily.

The next Mona’s Meals workshop, by popular demand, is Meat.  Take a look at the previous one here: http://tinyurl.com/39javws. Very probably, it will take place in the 3^rd or 4^th week of July. If you are interested in attending, please e-mail me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it