Kemm int injoranta madunna!

The Lawyer, the PhD, The Writer and myself are standing near the ‘door’, or rather a square piece of chicken wire, of a Siggiewi farmhouse. The weather is slightly blustery and because it’s Malta, we’re sartorially unprepared, so our arms are already crossed over our chest in a fire-placy self-hug.

We are giggling like crazy. TL is obviously going to explode. She keeps looking the other way and mumbling ‘If I hadn’t heard this, I wouldn’t believe the PhD at all! It’s all true! I can’t believe it!’. The Writer and myself have huge grins plastered across our faces. The PhD is nodding sagely and saying ‘See? I told you. Welcome to life in Siggiewi’. At that point, Joe calls out again.

‘Kemm int injoranta madunna!’

So we had not dreamt it at all.

Joe and Mary – no I’m not making them up – live in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Siggiewi. They till the land and on Saturday mornings and Tuesday afternoons take whatever the land has provided and their Griglioso (more of which, laters peoples) to their stand at the Farmers’ Market in Ta’ Qali.

This is where I met them the first time. The Griglioso, in its R2D2 magnificence, had a few qaghaq tal-ghasel (honey rings) baking inside it. ‘Are you reheating them?’ I asked them. ‘But no!’ Mary said ‘We’re baking them fresh. You’ll love them, you’ll see. Would you like to try some of the wine?’.

The qaghaq were absolutely gorgeous, with a pastry as thin as skin surrounding a dark baked treacle and honey filling replete with chopped nuts and perfume from the zest of citrus. These days a qaghqa has a centimetre of pastry and a fingertip of filling. Honey is usually not a real ingredient but a name. These were the other way ‘round. I ate one there and then and took a couple to David at Ta’ Soldi: we demolished them before the Classical Indian Workshop kicked off.

I drank some pomegranate wine which Mary poured for me. I loved it. So I tried some more. I tried some watermelon one. I loved that too. I loved the price: all of €6 of it for a full bottle. I was drunk, maybe for the first time ever in my life (unless I had not slept), at 8.30am.  I loved Mary, whose face exudes farm health,  the ravages of sun and rain, the joy of our villages. Her eyes are an extraordinary bright blue. ‘We make pizza’ she told me ‘with traditional Maltese ingredients. Come over.’ ‘Any time?’ I asked ‘Sure’ she said. So I made a date with her and in the evening, overdoing the hours at Tsek-Tsik we were too late to go to the farmhouse. So I stood her up and went to Legligin instead where we managed to spend an extraordinary €120 on titbits and 2 bottles of wine.

Mary had told me not to worry and ‘to turn up whenever because they were always open. We live there. It’s our house’. That is why, precisely, I did not  want to to just turn up. She was not having any of it and she convinced me. ‘Gejjin ir-rahal’ we told the PhD (who is not, incidentally, the only PhD in his village). ‘Bomba xbin’ he responded. ‘Ejja ha nurihulkom’

So we turned up, found the place and seeing the whole crumbling edifice in the dark, I decided to call Mary on her mobile.

‘Who are you?!’ she answered the phone, a little more than panicked. It was, after all, the ungodly hour of 9.15pm.

‘Erm...we came to eat as you said’ I replied.

‘Joey!’ she hollered. Then back on the phone ‘He’s just gone into the shower. And I’m in my pyjamas. We thought nobody was turning up.’

‘Erm, we could go it’s ok’ I said, TW looking at me oddly.

‘No! No! Come in!’ she said.

Mary could not find the light switch. ‘I have no idea where it is’ she told us, as if she’d just turned up at her own house. She called Joe, fresh out of the shower. He shuffled over to switch it on at the other end of the garage/yard/restaurant floor, behind the parked van, unleashing his tirade upon his poor wife. The PhD had to console us and explain that in the pretty village of Siggiewi, speaking to one’s wife in that terminology was an accepted fact of life. As were murders.

So that is why, on a Saturday night, we found ourselves sitting at a plastic-tablecloth-covered table surrounded by chicken-wire and some plastic flowers, opposite a bar made from reclaimed bricks emblazoned in wines made from every single kind of local vegetable and fruit (including lemon), next to Mary who was wearing, the guys figured out, her pyjamas.

The pizza base seemed to be the ready-made frozen kind but Mary said Joe made it himself. It is not important whether this was true or not. It tasted like a dry biscuit. The topping though, made from home-made caponata (Joe’s oeuvre), tinned tuna, cheese slices off a huge factory block (edam! no!) and a spicy sausage which could have been Maltese or could not, was fine.

We drank all manner of wines. At some point Mary just gave up and left the bottles on the table as we tasted one after the other. I stuck to watermelon and the others attacked the plum. The Lawyer embarrassed us all by ordering a Coke. In Siggiewi, Coke is apparently classy.

We played with Buttons the black and white cat. He is adorable and I could see it in our eyes that we all wanted to steal him. He's probably named after Buttons the Simpatici dog. Joe asked us if he could bring out the dalmations. Sure. They came out and he fed them leftover pizza.

The highlight of the place is the wood-burning oven. If we had warned Mary and Joe of our impending visit, they would have prepared a real Maltese roast. This place would be fabulous, with all its savage set-up and lack of finery, for a group shindig and a majjalata with a local baby piggy accompanied with roast potatoes. We just had the pizza and then loads of qaghaq tal-ghasel. And of course, the wines.

Afterwards we went to a bar in the pjazza where rounds for four of pure, undiluted alcohol cost €6. I cannot describe the people in the bar as some of them are front-page newspaper regulars, and they have nothing to do with party politics. I trembled every time TW got up to buy a round and prayed he'd return in one piece.

Total farmhouse bill: €10 per person

Total bar bill per person: €6

Pure Siggiewi Experience: Priceless.