Spaghetti with Artichokes and Tuna (Carciofi e Tonno)

You can choose to make this sauce with the flesh from leftover stuffed artichokes, or plain boiled artichokes, or artichoke flesh collected when in season and frozen; For more information about this, please see the previous post (or click here!)

Depending on whether you use plain or not will make a difference to the sauce.  I always add a bit of extra garlic, fresh garlic stems when in season.

This really is a sauce that you can adapt to whatever you fancy, but I'll give you the recipe of what I did this time, with some additional notes as I go along.  :)

I used leftover stuffed globe artichokes, which were simmered with plenty of fresh flat leaf parsley and fresh garlic (click this for a link to what i mean by fresh garlic).  If i had used plain simmered artichokes, I would have added a bunch more parsley and garlic.

Chicken Broth - (Brodu tat-Tigieg)

"Brodu" is so much more than a simple chicken stock in Malta.  It's a hearty meal, with 2 courses,  a delicious brothy soup, and then the chicken itself, served with steamed/boiled vegetables, potatoes and crusty bread. 

When I used to make this soup in Melbourne with my best mate and her partner, we'd eat soup on one day, have chicken pie the next with the leftover chicken, and any leftover soup would be used as a broth to make risotto the day after.  This is a fantastic way of getting all you can out of one chicken.  And so tasty!

Just ready.

Minestrina - or "leftover cauliflower soup"

This soup came out of the necessity of not being able to waste one little edible thing.
This is made out of leftover stock from cooking cauliflower (or in my case, romanesco broccoli) and can also be made using a mixture, or even just broccoli.

The method is to not throw away any water you might have used to boil or steam the veggies, but keep them in the pot and simply remove the veggies using a slotted spoon.  Any leftover cauliflower can be thrown back in to the stock later :)

This soup is incredibly delicious, and definitely one of our family favourites.  Its simplicity makes it ideal for a quick "after work" dinner the day after you've made your average "meat and veggies" meal.  This dish was also often used by the family to be the "starter" soup, preceding a simple meals of steamed/boiled veggies and possibly a small piece of meat, or maybe even just some tuna (out of a tin) or a hard boiled egg.

Minestrina is something my nanna made (although she used cauliflower only, never anything else), and I presume her mum made before her. 

Lampuki with Salsa Pikkanti

The title translates to "Dolphinfish with a piquant sauce" - this is one of my favourite Lampuki/mahi mahi dishes :)


It's a dish traditionally served cold, as far as i know.  I've always eaten it cold anyway, it's a great way to use up leftover lampuki (or as mum/nanna used to do, deliberately buy extra so we could have this the next day).

A bolognese/ragu based sauce for spaghetti (and baked rice the next day!)

Just like many people, bolognese sauce reminds me of being a kid, it's still the ultimate comfort food dinner for me. It instantly sends me back to being little, with my sister and 3 or 4 cousins, and mum and/or one of my aunts serving up steaming spaghetti loaded with sauce and cheese. Learning how to eat spaghetti with just a fork was like graduating, I remember the pride I felt when mum stopped cutting up the spaghetti because I'd learnt to twirl it deftly around my fork without dropping the pasta everywhere :)

Bolognese is also what started my cooking adventures apparently. At the age of 3, I was at my Aunt's house, and she was making bolognese. I looked at her in shock at one point, and started telling her that "my mummy makes it like this" and went on to explain what she was doing "wrong" and how she should make it. Needless to say she was very amused, and reminds me of this often hehehe...

The recipe I'm about to give is by no means a traditional bolognese. Apparently the original bolognese doesn't even have tomatoes or garlic in it, and uses heaps of milk and even funghi porcini! So I suppose a "ragu" or "meat based pasta sauce" is the better term.