Do you remember that time when your parents used to devote Saturday morning, starting as early as 6am, to making pastry, rolling it out with a pin, mixing the filling and, using various contraptions set about constructing the biggest pasta pocket known to mankind?

That’s right – the Maltese ravjula is not some kind of delicate, twee, perfectly-formed haven of irkotta but a savage, in-your-face, eat one and you’re set for lunch (eat two and the nap becomes mandatory) exemplar of Maltese cooking. In fact, it really reflects our culture: genuine, a little loud and a little I-don’t-care. The Maltese ravjul are the Maltese people in a plate, edible.

The original idea for the Mona’s Meals Maltese Ravioli workshop came about from one of our students, only he suggested a ‘filled-pasta workshop’ probably thinking we were going to end up making delicate ravioletti and tortelloni. Hah.

And thank goodness we did not. The dough for the ravjul is different – slightly stronger and can take the great amount of filling we piled into it. After all, the whole point is the filling – the pasta is just meant to be its handbag.

This was the first time we used the kitchen at Ta’ Soldi. Now everybody knows I’m not Ta’ Soldi’s biggest fan, but hey, their kitchen is just amazing and so is David, the guy who runs it. Turns out they actually had a huge pasta rolling machine in there – and by huge I really mean enormous – which cut down on our rolling time considerably.  Moreover, the kitchen itself is massive and all of us had our own individual spaces to work in and produce our batch – more than fifty each, according to the damage inflicted on the individual ones.

The star of this workshop was George Borg who was doing this for the first time ever. Georg retired a year ago or so and now devotes his time to growing vegetables, sourcing good local ingredients and generally cooking. Over the past months, having discovered a little plastic contraption for folding the ravioli, he has come up with the best combination of dough to filling I have ever seen (they’re so pretty) or tasted (the balance of flavours is delicate and perfect). The recipe is in the Recipes section on http://www.planetmona.com.

The students had a fantastic time as they always do when we talk less and do more. There wasn’t much talk going on here except for the usual teasing between the boys. The mix of ages spanned everything from early twenties, to, um, early sixties and the whole point of a day like this is learning but also relaxing: there is nothing like rolling dough to chill you out.

Afterwards, everybody dashed home with their ravjul: some to impress their mothers (it worked), some their wives and girlfriends (reports are of open-mouthed women), and others, judging by the e-mails I received, themselves; they could not resist the ravjul and just plonked them into some boiling water and ate them. General consensus? Delicious!

 

We will definitely be holding another Ravjul Malti workshop – please let us know if you are interested in attending so that we put you on the waiting list.