It’s 7.00am on a Sunday morning and The Writer’s sister and her husband are snoring away in the guest bedroom. The sun wakes me up streaming from the balcony door. It is Spring in Malta, the few weeks a year when the weather is perfect, the heat just right, the garden has come to life and I develop a huge craving for pastizzi.

Last night we four had a huge discussion about pastizzi, going into detail about The Real Thing. ‘The Real Thing’ cannot be made at home, I insist. Even the most brilliant recipes can never be cooked in the real forn tal-hatab. We never manage to get the pea recipe right because God only knows what the perfect mix is made of. The Writer’s sister’s husband insists that his ‘local’ in Gzira (which is his local no more as they live in a cottage in England where the ‘local’ is a pasty shop) has the best ones. Then there’s Serkin in Rabat but most of the time I have to ask them not to give me warmed up and dried ones. There’s Muscat Pastizzeria in Msida which every person who has been through Sixth Form/Junior College remembers with obese nostalgia. ‘You have never tried Roger’s’ I tell them.

Which is why at 7.30am on a Sunday I am carousing around Zejtun looking for Roger. Since I am a woman, not a man, I am allowed to ask for directions so I stop and ask the lady selling gizi and buqari, buying a bucket of the latter for a euro for four. ‘It’s right next to Tyson Butcher’. I sigh inwardly. Malta’s best pastizzi bakery is now ‘found’ with directions next to the most godawful cheap chicken outlet with the most horrific TV advertising.

I walk into Roger but Roger is, of course, not there. The son and his wife are. They’re called Henry and Therese Demanuele.  ‘I’m researching’ I tell them, toting my camera and inhaling the perfume assaulting me, dying to start stuffing my face. ‘Good’ Henry says ‘I’m about to take a tray out of the oven. Come shoot.’

The ‘oven’ is a wood-burning one, like the one used for our brilliant hobza. As soon as Henry twists opens the door and pulls the dark, rectangular tray out I am faced with rows upon rows of beautiful pastizzi tal-irkotta, steaming, the cheese puffed and about to burst from its wonderfully golden shells.

‘If you’re going to write about this’ Henry tells me ‘tell them that a pastizz tal-pizelli only has 240 calories!’ Therese adds ‘…and tal-irkotta 177’. They are very precise about the number. ‘I don’t care about calories’ I exclaim. ‘I care about this gorgeousness’.

‘But people have become obsessed with them’ Henry continues. ‘We were so pissed off when we realised this was affecting our business that we sent them to the UK to be tested and you know what? They’re actually low in cholesterol’.  They sent them to the UK so that nobody could tell them that the lab in Malta was cheating.

Pastizzi are our national fast food and we treat them like criminals while lauding the moreishness of mass-produced international crap.

Calories and fat count make me extremely sad. Grouped with ‘hygiene’ obsessions they have killed real eating. The people who say so many stupid things about calorie count are happily chowing Micky D’s, buying their children unhappy meals and sitting and eating in their Vitz at the drive through, offering us Lidl low-fat biscuits.  I want the real thing and the real thing is here in Zejtun, this wonderfully pretty town with its beautiful townhouses and respectful citizens.

Four days a year, Roger’s Bakery has pastizzi tal-incova which are basically the same recipe as tal-pizelli but instead of with meat, they are mixed with anchovy. As you can imagine, if you know anything about Malta, the four days are all Catholic no-meat days: Ash Wednesday, Duluri, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

I buy the traditional ‘six and six’ and rush back home, waking everybody up. And yes, as Therese and Henry had almost promised, everybody grabs their belly and sighs until, unable to resist the gloriousness in front of them, they reach out, pull one towards their mouth and sink their teeth into it. ‘Jeez! This is tremendous’ TW’s sister’s husband says. ‘Tremendous!’.

I take one and one and escape to the garden where I have epiphany after epiphany, a little like multiple orgasms, but tiny and food-related. The skin is crispy and crunchy, the filling sublime and creamy. There is not a single thing I would change about them. I eat the ‘covered’ one, stuffed with mushy peas: they are texture perfect, just on the right side of salty. I pop back in to have another irkotta one. TW, who has been teasing us all about being pigs has a face stuffed with a pizelli pastizz. ‘You were right’ he says.

Readers, believe me when I say that the only thing that can give you more satisfaction in life than your husband saying you’re right is a pastizz or four from Roger’s. Calories and fakery be damned.